


Here on the Island of Unwanted Toys

by Neyiea



Series: misfit(toy)s [9]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Gen, Multi, On Hiatus, Post-Season/Series 04, Pre-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-04-24 09:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19170364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: A carefully guarded secret is brought to light far too late for anything to be done about it, and everything begins to change. Gotham is cut off from the rest of the world and Jeremiah has disappeared without a trace, but he's not the only one who Bruce searches for in the ever-growing shadows of the Dark Zone.Because Jerome Valeska is, against all odds, still alive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In which I lovingly ignore canon because Jerome was the Joker to me long before he threw that card at Oswald in Arkham, and I refuse to accept his death.
> 
> I am not very great at long multi-chaptered fics, but I am going to try to get through this. Chapter lengths will vary so that I can keep myself sane and work concurrently on other stuff, and, uhhh, there's probably going to be a pairing with Bruce eventually but the vast majority of this part is going to be gen, so I'll tag it later when stuff actually starts to happen. 
> 
> xoxo

Jim Gordon has withheld a lot of information over the years; he’s kept secrets from people he loved and respected and it’s only ended in hurt. This, too, will end in more pain than he would ever want to cause.

How is it that every time he tries to protect someone that he cares about, he only ends up pushing them away? 

He’d kept it hidden, just as he’d been instructed to, because at the time he’d thought that it was the right thing to do. The need for the deception was so easily explained, and the repercussions that would occur if the news got out were a never-ending list. Gotham couldn’t take something like that again; the city would be ripped apart at the seams. He’d thought that what he was doing was for the best.

He never used to second-guess himself like this.

Or maybe the consequences this time around are enough to make him wonder if his moral compass isn’t what it used to be. If his values haven’t warped into something that his younger self wouldn’t recognize. 

He and Bruce stare up at the cloudy Gotham sky, the spot-light one small ray of hope in this pitch-black city. Of all the people in his life that he’s repeatedly let down he thinks that Bruce has bared it with the most composure. So many missteps have been made on his end, yet he’s been kept close enough to watch Bruce grow from a boy to a young man, he’s become personally familiar with some of the most defining moments of his life. Somehow Bruce has become a person whose opinion Jim values, a person who Jim doesn’t want to disappoint, a person who he cares about. Maybe not like a son, because Jim doesn’t know how it feels to be a father, but a favored younger cousin at the very least. 

Jim thinks about the day Jerome Valeska fell, and the way Bruce had reacted to his passing. He wonders if what he kept confidential will be enough to fully extinguish the trust that Bruce has placed in him.

He’d only meant to shield him from a devastating truth. Perhaps he should have known better. Perhaps he should have known from the moment that Bruce had asked him if he knew when Jerome would be buried that Bruce’s hunger for discovering the truth, despite how it might end up hurting him, would always be an unstoppable force. He should have told him, back then.

He can’t afford to keep these secrets indefinitely. They’ll damn him more with every day that he doesn’t speak up.

He wonders if it’s selfish of him to tell Bruce now.

God, he feels sick.

“Bruce, I have to tell you something.”

Bruce’s gaze falls away from the light in the sky and his face is carefully neutral as he turns his attention to Jim. He can tell something is off. He’d always been a clever kid, now he’s growing into an even smarter young man.

He’s capable of doing so much good, Jim can see the potential there every time he looks at him. Bruce Wayne has the willpower and tenacity to make the entire world a better place, as well as the kindness and moral code needed to ensure that it’s not only the rich and influential who benefit from the changes. His integrity will do great things for Gotham, someday. 

Jim is so proud of him.

He’s been proud of him for years, even if Bruce was sometimes far too tenacious for his own good.

Jim takes a fortifying breath. It does nothing to ease the terrible feeling roiling inside of him.

“The day Jerome fell—” Bruce’s expression goes blank and Jim almost feels a physical pain in his chest at the way he closes himself off so quickly. He’d known, maybe better than anyone else, what Jerome’s death had been to Bruce. “—he was found vital signs absent. His body was taken in, and when Lucius began his examination—” He can’t even bring himself to say it. Before Jerome’s first revival he hadn’t had a pulse, hadn’t been breathing, and they’d let that lull them into a false sense of security back then. They should have been prepared for it the second time around, they should have been more careful with the unassuming, broken body that had once been housed in the depraved depths of Indian Hill, and that had been encircled by so many strangers before Jim had been able to make them back off.

Had someone done something, or given him something, that merely made him appear dead? When exposed to extreme cold the human body reduced blood flow to the limbs, and hypothermia could cause a weak pulse, and if Victor Fries had been working on something that could make someone seem dead for a few crucial minutes before starting to wear off… 

Or maybe Jerome had been changed years ago when his body was first taken to Indian Hill. They’d made monsters out of so many, wasn’t it reasonable to think that they’d tampered with his genetic code, too? Maybe he would always be able to revive himself, like some sort of undead creature from a horror story. 

There are so many questions that Jim doesn’t know the answer to, and that he might never know the answer to. 

Their only saving grace in that terrible situation had been that multiple breaks and fractures had kept Jerome from escaping the Medical Examiner’s Room when he’d awoken, eyes unfocussed and limbs flailing. 

The silence between them drags on for too long, and Jim doesn’t know how to fill it. 

“He wasn’t dead,” Bruce eventually murmurs, head drooping, face falling into shadow. Jim’s silence is all the confirmation that he needs. “What about the body I saw? Jeremiah pushed—” Bruce stops abruptly. He curls in on himself, looking painfully young and lost, and Jim feels a little bit like the monsters that he’s put behind bars.

Guilty, a familiar voice whispers in his head. 

“A John Doe murder victim; they did facial reconstruction. They thought—We thought,” he amends, because he has to take responsibility, “that his followers might stir up even more trouble once he’d been buried, but we couldn’t pretend to just keep his body in the morgue forever. We thought, if people knew that he was alive again, after all that he did… The way he took control of this city the first time he came back to life was enough of a nightmare, we couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen a second time around.”

And what a load of good keeping secrets had done them. Gotham was doomed the minute Jerome began his search for Xander Wilde. 

“Where is he now?” Bruce’s tone is sharp, impatient. “Was he taken out of Gotham during the evacuation, or is he still here?”

“He’s here, but in the confusion with the bombs, and then the military—Bruce, we’ve lost contact with the handlers at the safehouse that he was kept in. I don’t know if they’re all dead, or if he managed to get out.”

Bruce nods, his face grim.

“I’m sorry that I kept this from you.”

Another mistake, another regret. Another instance where he’s proven himself untrustworthy to someone who he’d only wanted to keep safe. 

Bruce is silent for a long time, staring out at the inky skyline with unblinking eyes. He eventually turns away, and Jim wonders if it’s because Bruce can’t bear to look at him right now.

“I can understand why you’d want to keep this news from spreading to the general public, Detective Gordon.” His tone is deliberately even, and everything about his body language is closed off. Insurmountable. “But, after everything, I wish you could have trusted me enough to have told me the truth.”

Jim wishes so, too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally back to writing the interaction that made me start this series in the first place, my boysssss. 
> 
> This was a tough chapter to hash out. There's a division between how I _thought_ Bruce should react and how I _wanted_ Bruce to react; I hope the ensuing balancing act is genuine to his character and the emotional state he's been left in, as well as the history that these two have between them. 
> 
> Here we go!

Seventeen days have passed since the bridges blew, making it almost three weeks since Gotham had been physically severed from the rest of the world. It’s also been almost three weeks since anyone can recall seeing either of the Valeskas. Jeremiah is off plotting who-knows-what, and the safehouse that Jerome had been confined to, heavily sedated while his body was in the process of healing, had appeared abandoned upon inspection.

Or so Bruce had been told. He’s not entirely sure that he can trust what he’s told, these days. 

He is—understandably, he thinks—infuriated about the entire situation.

Selina is alive but may never be able to walk again; she’s started pulling away and is suffering and Bruce doesn’t know how to make any of it better. Some days he doesn’t think he can do anything to make it better. Everyone is miserable. The city that he loves is being torn apart; pieces of it are being snatched up by the vilest, most violent criminals who ever darkened any doorstep. He’s been lied to one too many times. Been betrayed one too many times. His trust and friendship have been used against him in the most terrible ways, ways that remind him of Theo Galavan and his wicked schemes to carry out revenge for an ancient family feud that Bruce was never even aware of. 

But he can’t let his anger get the better of him. They all need to stick together, now more than ever, and he can’t let the desire to lash out at any nearby target overtake him. A united, level-headed front is the only way they’ll be able to make it through these dark times to eventually reunite with the mainland. It’s hard to keep it locked inside, though. 

Jerome, Jeremiah, Jim.

Jerome had left a legacy, alright. He’d planted a trap for his brother and had meant to die so that Jeremiah could fill the sinister void that he’d left, and Bruce has only ever felt this level of animosity towards him once before; back when he thought that Jerome had killed Alfred. Back in that maze of mirrors, with the jagged shard clutched in his hand and Jerome laying prone underneath him. Back when he’d first become truly aware of the darkness that was housed within him, and the wicked potential that went hand-in-hand with it. 

Jeremiah had taken the project that he’d been so passionate about, that they’d both been so passionate about, and instead of bringing hope he’d wrought destruction with it, all while pretending to be Bruce’s friend. All while letting Bruce get closer to him, letting Bruce feel like he could depend on him. And even when he revealed himself he claimed that his terrible acts were for Bruce’s sake; lies lies lies dripping like venom from his smiling mouth. 

And Jim—what he kept secret hurts more than Bruce can even explain.

Jerome had never pretended to be Bruce’s friend in the first place. And though Jeremiah’s betrayal and partnership with Ra’s leaves him feeling both enraged and weighed down, he and Bruce didn’t have the same length of history as Bruce and James Gordon. 

People expect him to be angry at Jeremiah, but no one outside of a handful of people know that Jerome is alive to be angry at, and Bruce certainly can’t start telling people that Jerome is alive just so that he can strip even more of their frail hope away, and the fact that he has to keep the secret that was kept from him for weeks and only shared when there wasn’t an option to keep it concealed any longer is—

Everything together is almost too much to bear. 

Some nights he finds himself waking up from a restless sleep broiling with a rage unlike anything he’s felt before, and he hates it. Hates that his life is being overcome by such negativity, and that he can’t seem to put a stop to it. He can’t stand sitting still and waiting for a gloomy sunrise that will herald a day where nothing changes for the better and so, when everything becomes too much, he slips out of the apartment he and Alfred are staying in, leaves the safety of the Green Zone, and goes on a hunt.

He’d started small at first. Ducking into the Dark Zone for thirty minutes at a time to scout out the area beyond the ramshackle barricades and checkpoints, and though his main goal has always been to look for a trace of either Valeska it isn’t long before other objectives start to filter in. He’d begun to stay for an hour at a time to investigate the surrounding buildings, searching for traces of the gangs that he knew were digging their claws into the city, trying to track their movement.

Then he went in for two hours, then more. Over the weeks that he’s been actively going out into the Dark Zone he’s managed to quietly intervene in a few tricky situations, such as disarming a handful of disorderly gang members who were getting too close to the barricade for comfort, and had once managed to guide a few lost souls towards the safety of the Green Zone, but he’s still found no sign of Jerome or Jeremiah, or anyone who is willing to speak up about where they might be.

He’s become so desperate to find a trace of either twin—because having them both at large will only plunge Gotham into further darkness and hurt their opportunities to reunify with the mainland, among other more personal reasons—that he’s started to slip up.

That is to say; he’s been becoming a bit lax about his personal safety.

In his own defense he had been prepared to run into people. People with guns or knives or even fear-toxin. He had not been prepared for… Not-people.

He’d be equal parts bewildered and terrified by the existence of such a creature if he wasn’t too busy running back towards the Green Zone, the deep wound on his side bleeding through the pressure of his hand. 

He wonders if the thing’s claws were governed by the same cinema logic as a werewolf’s, and if he’s about to be doomed to transform into a hideous monster every full moon.

And to think that Bruce had been scared enough of bats when they were just the size of his fist and all that he logically had to worry about was rabies.

This was much worse. So, so much worse.

He slumps against a grimy wall, fighting to catch his breath. He thinks he managed to outrun it, or maybe it was flying overhead somewhere preparing to dive-bomb him in a manner similar to predatory birds.

Bruce loves Gotham with all of his heart, but he’s almost certain that no other city in the world has to deal with feral werebats, or fire-proof arsonists, or serial murderers coming back from the dead. Or gross violations of ethics that involve human experimentation, for that matter.

Maybe Gotham, all those years ago, had been built on the Hellmouth. 

Maybe it’s the blood loss, but he snickers at his own train of thought.

It’s probably the blood loss. Either that or it’s hysteria and if he loses it out here in the Dark Zone in the middle of the night, still half a mile from the relative safety found within the barricades, the chances of him getting home in one piece are slim to none.

Alfred and Selina are going to be so disappointed. 

Or heartbroken. 

He hears something; soft footsteps that couldn’t possibly belong to the thing he’d been running away from, but that matters little since it’s everyone for themselves out in the Dark Zone unless you’re in one of the many gangs that have sprung up, and Bruce is already wounded. He slips into the shadows as best as he can, fighting down the rising panic.

It’s just one person. Even if he’s hurt, surely he can defend himself from just one—

“Brucie.”

Bruce seizes up at the familiar voice.

Weeks of trying to hunt him down, weeks of searching with nothing to show for it, and now, when Bruce is already out of breath and bleeding—

“I saw you running through here, Bruce.” Jerome’s voice is loud, abrasive, _delighted_. “What are you doing out alone after dark, young man? Out from behind the safety of the barricade, no less. You’d better not be planning on getting yourself killed by a couple of nameless miscreants. I expected so much more from you.”

He stumbles out of his hiding spot, because even though Detective Gordon had finally come clean Bruce has to see to believe. Has to prove to himself that he’s not just hearing things. Even after he’d learnt the truth he’d still had nightmares about being unable to save Jerome; terrible amalgamations of memories and dreams where he slipped out of reach, his body breaking upon impact with the car roof he’d fallen upon.

Even with nothing but moon and starlight illuminating him Bruce instantly recognizes the shock of red hair and the tall, broad figure.

“Jerome.” He doesn’t step closer, even though he has a strong urge to fling himself forward and—and punch him across the jaw, or tackle him to the ground, or take him by the hand and squeeze to make sure that he wasn’t a hallucination.

He’d mourned, in his own way, when he thought Jerome had died. He’d even tried to talk to Jeremiah about him, once, before it became clear that he shouldn’t attempt to broach the subject again. But he’s alive. Alive, alive, alive. He feels so much rage towards Jerome for all that he’d done and all that he’d changed by leaving that trap for Jeremiah, but seeing him standing here when the last time Bruce had actually seen his body he’d been sprawled out, lifeless, on the roof of that car makes him feels as if…

Maybe the dying hope in this city can come back to life, too. 

Maybe the things inside of him that have been consumed by his sadness and anger can be revived, too. 

It’s a bizarre juxtaposition; his anger and his… Not anger.

But the rage that he does hold within him—that he feels towards so many people and so many instances that he could not change—turns from a small spark to a wildfire in the presence of Jerome. He who is responsible for so many vile things. He who Bruce had mourned, had missed, had wanted more than anything to save. He who Bruce can direct his anger at without guilt. 

He who Bruce still did not regret following over the side of a roof while tied up in nothing but laundry lines, even after all that had been made clear to him.

Jerome opens his arms wide, as if he’s showcasing himself.

“In the flesh,” he says with a harsh laugh.

Bruce, perhaps moving on instinct or perhaps finally overcome by the fury that’s been consuming him for almost three weeks now, rushes forward and strikes out.

Jerome barely pivots out of the way, and his smile widens eerily.

It reminds Bruce of the maze of mirrors. It reminds Bruce of when Jerome was urging him to give in to his darkness, to let it out. 

Those memories just make him more furious.

He lashes out again, kicking Jerome’s side, and he’s grimly pleased when he hears Jerome’s breath rush out of his lungs. But Jerome’s retaliation, a swing that he manages to dodge, makes his torso twist in a way that tugs sharply at his open skin. Even though he tries to muffle a cry of pain Jerome’s eyes are quick to zero in on the bloody hand that Bruce is still holding against his side. 

“What the fuck happened to you?”

Why would he ask? Why would he care? Bruce was hurt, wasn’t that enough for him?

Wasn’t that what both of the Valeskas wanted, in the end?

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Bruce winds up for a punch, Jerome ducks out of the way with ease.

“I’ve been running around this brand-new playground for weeks, Bruce, between spying on my old pals back at Arkham—seems like they didn’t make the cut when it came time to evacuate—and getting a feel for the new contenders in Gotham.” Jerome slaps an open palm against Bruce’s sternum. It’s not enough to hurt but it is enough for Bruce, already more unsteady on his feet than he would like, to stumble back against a wall.

Bruce feels woozy and fatigued. Perhaps it was wrong of him to try and start a fight while injured, no matter how justified his anger was. He’s going to have to live with the consequences, now.

“There’s madness out here that even I never could have anticipated.” Jerome laughs again, and Bruce attempts to keep his face carefully blank as he tries to catch his breath. “Plus do you really think that I, of all people, wouldn’t believe you if you claimed that something more-than-ordinary managed to draw your blood? How many times have you come close to dying, again?”

Too many times.

He watches as Jerome flicks his wrist, a blade appearing in his hand as if by magic.

Bruce wonders if he can survive many more of these close calls. On instinct he wracks his brain for something to say that may give him more time, because he doesn’t think his body will be able to stand much more exertion. If his legs give out on him with Jerome right here, with a knife in his hand…

This isn’t how he wants to die; by himself in a place where he shouldn’t be, his few loved ones ignorant as to where he is. 

“You wrote about me in your diary.”

Jerome pauses midway through the action of reaching his free hand into his jacket pocket. “Aw, you read my innermost thoughts and desires?”

“No. Jeremiah did.” Bruce watches with growing concern as Jerome pulls out… A lighter? “And then he decided that he’d try to execute almost all of your plans sanely. You can see how well that’s been going for everyone.” Scalding bitterness creeps into his tone. Even though he’s… Happy? Relieved? That Jerome really is alive, he’s still so full of anger and resentment.

Rightful anger and resentment, even. Every terrible and every confusing thing that he feels towards Jerome is well-deserved. 

“What can I say?” Jerome’s smile is a terrible, commiserating thing. “I gave him the will, but you gave him the way. I told you we’d make a great team.”

A cold wave of dread crashes over Bruce, and his simmering anger fizzles out under the sheer weight of it. 

‘You gave him the way.’

And—

‘I could not have done any of this without your help.’

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, Bruce.” Jerome steps closer. There’s less than a foot of space between them. “I don’t have the whole story, but where else would my brother get the supplies to make as many bombs as he did?” Bruce feels sick at the reminder of how his freely given trust and friendship were ultimately used against him, and against Gotham as a whole. “Obviously you two were buddying up after you thought I died.” With a click the lighter flickers to life, and Jerome draws his blade over the flame. 

Bruce’s downward spiraling thoughts about Jeremiah are abruptly put on hold. 

“What are you doing?” Because, if Bruce didn’t know any better, he’d almost swear that Jerome was planning to cauterize his wound.

“Don’t play dumb. Lift up your shirt.”

“No.” Bruce presses his hand tighter to his side, fighting back a wince. “There’s a functioning hospital in the Green Zone.”

“Oh, and you’ll just walk there, losing more blood in the process?” The humor is all-too evident in Jerome’s tone. “Come on, I’ll call a truce for the night. You don’t try to punch my face off again, and I won’t stab you, even a little bit. Cross my heart and everything. I swear it on—” He pauses for a moment, then chortles. “My own grave.”

Bruce doesn’t know if he can bear to accept help from someone who is, in essence, the root of so much that’s gone wrong recently. There are so many people to blame, even though it hurts to think about Bruce himself carries some responsibility for what happened, just as Jerome had suggested—for being naïve, for giving Jeremiah too much power and freedom without question—however, Jerome is the person who began to direct everything towards this moment.

Or was it Ra’s? Jeremiah’s first plan had been foiled before he showed up with his talk of heirs and Dark Knights and offered the assistance of his League of Shadows to take back the bombs. But Ra’s was already dead, killed by Bruce and Barbara, he was gone and even if Bruce still detests him he was no longer a target for Bruce’s all-consuming rage, and—

Bruce can feel his heart beating too-fast in his chest, his body franticly trying to compensate for the imbalance that it’s been thrown into. He might not make it to the Green Zone, let alone the hospital, if the bleeding doesn’t stop.

“Come on,” Jerome goads, and his lighter clicks shut, “you can think of it as payback for what you were doing the last time we saw each other.”

I couldn’t save you, Bruce thinks a touch too desperately. He pushes it back.

“Fine,” he says. “We’ll call a truce for the night.” Bruce slowly takes his bloody hand away from his side. “Though I want it known that I am sure that you have an ulterior motive. This is extremely out of character for you.” He pulls up his shirt and abruptly feels dizzy from the pain of torn fibers pulling free from the wound they’d been pressed into. 

“Well Bruce, I always seem to raise more hell when you’re in the picture,” Jerome’s tone is oddly-fond. If Bruce weren’t so busy trying to stay calm he might attempt to figure out what that meant. “We feed off of each other; I’d hate to lose that kind of symbiotic relationship.” 

The hot blade is pressed against Bruce’s side without any warning and Bruce chokes on a scream as his flesh sizzles and burns. Jerome watches the pain flash across his face without seeming to take joy in it. 

“So, broski is trying to carry out my visions, huh? You’d think he’d try and be a little more original, but I guess I got the creative genes. I am an artist, after all.” After several agonizing moments Jerome pulls the knife away and leans in to get a better look at the wound, his gloved fingers prodding at the edges of tender skin. “I have to admit he started off strong, but I’ve been waiting for something else to happen for weeks and there’s been almost nothing but boring old gang wars out here. With the amount of source material I left behind he ought to be wreaking way more havoc.” He pulls his lighter back out and holds the blade over it again. Bruce sucks a sharp breath in through his teeth, and his hands clench into fists.

“I’m so sorry that your plans didn’t work out the way you wanted.” He couldn’t sound any more insincere if he tried. “But Jeremiah has vanished like smoke in the wind, so now we both get to live in disappointment.”

“Well.” Jerome’s eyes flick up to find his, glinting eerily as they reflect flame. “I’m not that disappointed. If I had actually died my ghost would be pretty pissed off and I’d be haunting that fucker right about now, but I didn’t die, Bruce.” The hot blade is pressed against him again and Bruce cracks the back of his skull against the wall as he instinctively tries to escape the source of pain. “He was supposed to be my legacy, you know. My final curse upon Gotham. But if he can’t properly fill the role I left for him then it’s up to me to get the work done.”

Bruce doesn’t think Jerome should be admitting this to him. Not that there’s much he can do about it right now.

And not that he expected anything different, really.

“Plus, if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about Jeremiah staying vanished.”

The blade is pulled back again, and Bruce finds himself sliding down the wall, legs too weak at the moment to keep supporting his weight. Jerome crouches in front of him to keep at eye-level.

“Early on I wrote all kinds of things about you, Bruce, about ending you,” Jerome states matter-of-factly as he pockets both the lighter and the knife, folding his hands under his chin thoughtfully as he stares at Bruce without blinking. “If he’s trying to carry out my plans and he hasn’t even made one attempt on your life then that means that Jeremiah isn’t too keen on seeing you dead.”

He told me that he considers me his best friend, Bruce thinks weakly, but he can’t bring himself to say it. It would feel too much like a deception on his tongue. How could anyone who claimed to be a friend, who claimed to want the best for him, hurt him so much?

“I wrote about our altercation in the maze of mirrors,” Jerome continues without prompting, “about how I saw something dark inside of you that was begging to be set free. Maybe Jeremiah is more focused on that than the idea of killing you.”

Great.

That explained a few things. 

“With that in mind; do you really think that he’s disappeared completely? That he hasn’t been watching you?” 

That was a disquieting thought. The idea of Jeremiah watching him out here makes his skin itch.

“I’ve tried looking for him. I haven’t even found a trace of him.”

“That’s not surprising, he’s good at hiding himself away. You can trust me on that, at least. But if you’ve been throwing yourself into the Dark Zone at night then I bet he’s got a pair of eyes watching you from somewhere. If someone happened to catch sight us here, together, well, that’s at least enough for someone to start slipping up, start making mistakes. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if I was the one to make you join the dark side, and I bet whoever’s helping him knows that.”

Bruce does not have the energy to address Jerome’s offhand comment about him switching sides right now. He barely has the energy for this conversation, period.

“You sound so sure of yourself.”

“Call it a twin’s intuition. We’re more alike than you’d think, even before I helped turn him mad.”

Bruce wants to tell him he’s wrong, that Jeremiah was nothing like him, but did he ever really know what Jeremiah was like before Jerome’s plot had been carried out? Aside from their first few conversations the Jeremiah that Bruce had known, had thought of as a friend, was the same one who’d teamed up with Ra’s to make Bruce’s life a living nightmare. 

“I’m going to stop you. Whatever it is you plan, I’ll stop you.” It doesn’t seem like much of a threat at the moment, but Jerome doesn’t immediately dismiss it.

“Yeah, I guess you’ll try.” Jerome stands up, and Bruce hates the way he towers over him, but he also feels like if he tries to pick himself up off the ground right now he’ll end up falling over. “I hope you try, to be honest. Things just wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t around doing your best to keep everything from falling apart.”

Bruce distantly wonders if he’s supposed to take that as a compliment.

“What were you doing out of the Green Zone anyway? Coming out here alone is stupid, even for you.”

“I was hunting,” Bruce answers without thinking it through. That’s what he’d always thought of it as. Hunting for clues. Hunting for answers. Hunting for _them._

Jerome throws his head back and laughs. It’s too-loud in the stillness of the night, with all the beings who once lived in the shadows now prowling the streets freely.

But, Bruce supposes, Jerome’s laughter is something of a trademark for him. Maybe, even if he’s giving away their location, the other things that go bump in the night will keep at bay, hyper-aware of what that sound means and who it signals. Because frankly, even if Bruce were a criminal, he wouldn’t want to get too close to the source.

“Are you finally growing into your teeth and claws,” Jerome asks him with genuine mirth once he’s finished cackling. “Becoming the predator that you were born to be?”

Bruce frowns up at him. “Teeth and claws?”

“Never mind, it’s an inside joke with myself.” Jerome settles his hands on his hips and looks down at Bruce with a critical eye that makes Bruce want to tackle him to the ground on principle. He may be down, but he’s not out. Not yet. “Does anyone know that you’re out here? Is someone going to come looking for you once you don’t check in at a certain time ooooor, that’s a no, huh?” Jerome snorts at Bruce’s chagrined expression. “For such a smart guy you sure can be an idiot.”

“I’ve been compromised,” Bruce responds. “I can’t help it.”

That’s probably the wrong thing to say, even if it’s the truth.

“Yeah, I bet seeing your beloved city like this is rough on you. You’re the sentimental type.”

Bruce’s eyebrows furrow. He should really let this exchange end here, but…

He’s still never been able to talk to anyone about Jerome’s death, or what it had meant to him, or the confusing grief that had occurred in its wake. That’s just one more thing that he’s angry about, really. Maybe saying something, anything, will grant him at least a little relief. 

He doesn’t want to be so angry all the time. He wants to be how he used to be. 

“You slipped out of my hands and I watched you fall, Jerome.” This deranged man, who no one had ever helped before. Who deserved to face justice for his crimes. Who was infuriating and heartbreaking, though not quite in equal measure. Who Bruce had wanted to hold on to for as long as it took to save him. “I saw you die. And then Detective Gordon and whoever else in the GCPD who knew that you were still alive kept it a secret from me for weeks. I deserved to know the truth, I—” He can’t bring himself to say that he’d shed actual tears over Jerome’s death. He’s not that far gone from pain and relief and blood loss. “I deserved to know,” he repeats firmly. Anger still simmers under the surface of his skin at the deception he’d undergone. He could understand why the others had gone along with it without thinking to tell him anything, but Detective Gordon…

He’d seen Bruce after Jerome’s fall. He knew what Bruce had felt in the immediate aftermath. 

“I didn’t die. Or I didn’t stay dead, whatever, same difference.”

“But I thought you did.” And that was what mattered. “I wanted to save you. I failed, but I wanted so badly to save you.”

‘Nobody ever helped me… Ever.’ Jerome had said to him in that diner what feels like forever ago.

Even now, thinking about the look he’d had on his face makes something inside of Bruce crack.

Jerome stares at him like Bruce is some inconceivable anomaly, when really he’s just someone trying desperately to hang on to the shreds of the goodness left inside of him. It’s not that he wants to play hero, like Jerome has insinuated before, it runs deeper than that. He’s someone who has to believe in absolution because he himself has done terrible things and he knows, deep down, that he’s capable of doing more. He had drawn a line in the sand years ago and told himself that he would never cross it, but he had. It didn’t matter if he’d been conditioned and Alfred was revived, it didn’t matter what Ra’s threatened him with, he’d broken his one rule more than once. 

Bruce lets his tired eyes fall shut and tries not to linger on those memories.

“Shit. Are you passing out?”

“No.” At least, he doesn’t think he is. Other than the pain left by Jerome’s hot knife he actually feels a little bit better now that he’s not actively bleeding out. “But out of curiosity, if I do, am I going to wake up handcuffed to a chair again?”

Jerome laughs. It’s not as harsh as usual. Or maybe that’s just Bruce’s hearing going wonky.

“No. Not this time.”

Jerome crouches down again and wraps one of Bruce’s arms around his shoulders. The act of standing tugs at his freshly burnt skin and he bites his lip hard enough to bleed while holding in a scream. When the wave of pain passes he tries to brush it off by ignoring that it ever happened.

“I’m beginning to wonder if this is some sort of fever-dream caused by whatever awful germs must have been on the claws of the thing that attacked me.”

“I like doing the unexpected, Bruce.” Jerome tells him as his arm slips away. Bruce is thankfully able to stay on his feet without support. “It keeps things fresh. It keeps people on their toes. I’ll definitely try something the next time I see you though, since our truce was only for tonight,” his almost-friendly tone is so at odds with what his words imply that it nearly makes Bruce dizzy, but he wouldn’t expect anything less, “so don’t get too comfortable.”

At least he can count on that. Jerome’s desire to cause pandemonium is predictable, almost like a routine, and Bruce needs some kind of routine now that his entire world is on fire. 

“Don’t be too disappointed when I survive, or when I retaliate.” 

Jerome chuckles as he starts walking away, sinking into shadows like he belongs there.

“I won’t be,” he says, low enough that Bruce can hardly hear him. 

Something strikes him as being strange. Stranger, even, than this entire night had been, bat-monster and all, but it isn’t until Bruce has slipped back into the Green Zone that his mind trips up on something.

‘Something.’

Why did Jerome say he'd try ‘something’ when he was usually so upfront about his desire to kill Bruce?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much like how in Shelter Before the Storm we got to see that _something_ was definitely starting on Jeremiah's end (though the fool had no idea, seriously), in this part we get a comparable situation with Jerome, who's aware that he's got something of a _soft spot_ for Bruce.
> 
> In other words; I had a great time writing this and I hope you like it too!

Gotham really has been painted crazy. Out here in the Dark Zone there’s nothing good or bright left, just a downward spiral of madness and mayhem. 

There are pockets—niche little places that don’t appear out of the ordinary considering the rest of this forsaken city—that house dark things that Jerome would have never thought existed outside of horror movies. The monsters who’ve been hiding in the shadows have finally started coming out to play, and it’s invigorating to watch. In between scouring the city for fun new sights he makes trips back to Arkham to see what his cronies are up to, which hardly ever leaves him disappointed. 

He even gets close enough to check on his Horribles a few times, though from enough of a distance where they can only sense that they’re being watched without watching him back.

Everyone thought he’d died, and it would be an absolute shame not to take advantage of it by raising some hell. He’s been keeping track of what people are doing when they think he’s not around all while letting suggestions of his presence bleed though, as if he’s a lingering wraith. He likes to laugh softly, well hidden in the shadows, and watch as people who sure like to act tough react as if they’ve actually seen his vengeful ghost. 

It wouldn’t do for people to start forgetting about him, after all. They need to remember him. Remember how much they should fear him. Remember that he’d come back as a messiah of madness once before.

He wants the dreadful levels of anticipation to rise within the unruly masses. Wants them to think that paranoia is finally taking hold of them. Wants rumors to spread like wildfire long before he deigns to actually show his face. And until he does he’s going to keep a close eye on the chaos that’s erupting.

There’s a lot of fighting, a lot of violence. There are many dark and dreadful things out here to be fascinated by, but for the most part it is gangs going after gangs. The usual Gotham miscreants amping up now that there are so few resources left to work against them. It’s much less exciting to watch than, say, Freeze and Firefly trying to ice over or roast each other. He’s gotten used to grander things and simple gun and knife fights, while remaining a fun way to pass the time, just aren’t as alluring as they used to be.

He expected more. 

After he’d snuck up on his lone handler in the safehouse—easy enough when the man was screaming on his phone about the destroyed bridges and not paying attention at all—and gotten answers to a few of his most pressing questions, he’d been waiting for something more. 

Jeremiah was supposed to be the craziest thing in this city, the most dangerous thing, he was supposed to be the tool that Jerome used to bring Gotham to its knees.

But weeks of waiting and there was barely anything aside from petty squabbles that ended in predictable ways, and turf wars that could have been so much grander if only a force beyond comprehension was there to drive everyone a little madder and bring out their absolute worst. He is fully capable of making his own fun, occasionally carving smiles onto the faces of fallen gang members just to see how their companions react when they find the body, but when he takes himself out of the picture things tend to become stale and unsurprising. 

Which is, in fact, the exact opposite of what he wanted. 

But then, when everything was becoming dull enough that he’d begun to contemplate revealing himself ahead of schedule—

Bruce Wayne. Out in the Dark Zone, wounded and alone in the middle of the night. It would have been so easy to end him out here where his pathetic friends would never think to look, but…

For all that Jerome has tried to kill him over the years he’s found that his passion for it had diminished completely upon his second awakening. The last things he’d remembered, again, were focused on Bruce, however these memories weren’t quite as violently impulsive as wanting to slit his throat. 

He’s not a sentimental person. He isn’t ruled by feelings; if he was he’d have killed his mother and uncle long ago. Methodical madness and extreme apathy are what command him, with his wits sharp enough to cut even though he’s certifiably insane. But even keeping that in mind there is a twisted sort of fondness that had insidiously begun to grow inside of him ever since he and Bruce had that unexpected conversation of theirs through the fence inside of Arkham. 

Bruce was too fun for his ending to be mundane, and then he somehow became too fun to end, period. It was much more interesting to keep him alive and watch him react.

He’d meant it, the quip about their symbiotic relationship. Jerome thinks that he’s grown because of Bruce, though not in any way that Bruce-killjoy-Wayne would endorse, and he thinks that Bruce has grown because of him. They’ve fed off of each other to become more than what they were before.

Not to mention…

Even now he can sometimes feel the phantom of Bruce’s hand gripping onto his.

There’s something captivatingly dark and twisted inside of Bruce, but what it’s at war with isn’t just Bruce’s resolve or reasoning, or his will to not give in to the shadows inside. There’s something blinding inside of him too. 

Something brilliant. 

Bruce Wayne, defender and mender of broken things. There are breaks and cracks within him, and razor edges in unexpected places, but something warm and golden has been poured into the fissures to keep him bound together. 

‘I wanted to save you,’ Bruce had told him. ‘I failed.’

He hadn’t.

Bruce’s misplaced, bewildering compassion, the very same that he’d shown at his uncle’s diner the week before what was supposed to be Jerome’s final act took place, is what kept him from reaching his end. Bruce had a way of throwing a wrench into his plans one way or another, ruining what could have been a spectacular show like it was what he was born to do. The moment he’d decided to take it upon himself to jump after him Jerome’s intention to leave Gotham behind to his legacy had been warped. When Bruce made his mind up to change an inevitable outcome… Things happened.

Inevitable outcomes were altered.

Bruce has so much potential for causing mayhem. Jerome almost wants to sit back and watch what he’s getting up to now that Gotham is a madhouse, because the show was bound to be exhilarating. 

Bruce had said that he was hunting. Bruce was finally growing into his teeth and claws, and learning how to use them. Bruce was—

Far more threatening, far more fun, far more… _Everything_ than he appeared to be. 

But Jerome is the embodiment of chaos, and selfish actions, and lunacy, and Gotham clearly needs a guiding hand to keep it on track. 

He didn’t paint the town crazy just so that Gotham could revert back to its usual self after a few short months, after all. He wants this to last. He wants the scars of what he’s accomplished to never fade away. The gangs, and the monsters, and his Horribles are ripping the town apart, but there needs to be more.

Jeremiah should be doing more. 

If not to destroy Gotham as it had been, then at least to try and bring that riveting darkness to the surface of Bruce Wayne. Destroying the bridges to cut them adrift was not nearly enough. 

Sometimes you just had to do things yourself.

Or maybe, Jerome amends as he navigates a treacherously dark alleyway, not entirely by yourself. Someone with his level of charisma would always ensnare followers, and maybe even make the kinds of acquaintances that could be counted as friendly, if not friends.

He presses up against a wall, watching with sharp eyes as two people dressed up in burlap—an obvious way to mimic their leader even though they’d never pull off the aesthetic half as skillfully—slink down a narrow street. 

It’s going to be nice to see Scarecrow again, face to face.

But before that Jerome is going to scare his followers just a little, just enough to strike the fear of death and the unknown into their hearts.

Just enough to make them believe in ghosts.

The sound of his laughter is low, but it carries. One of Scarecrow’s henchmen freezes, then turns to the other. Jerome is too far away to hear what he whispers, but he imagines that it’s something along the lines of, ‘did you hear that?’

Everyone in the Dark Zone would be hearing a lot more, and seeing things that couldn’t possibly have an explanation, for a little longer before Jerome finally reveals himself to the masses. He couldn’t let his second revival be something unremarkable. 

He may not have a news van to steal and equipment to broadcast from this time around, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to put on a hell of a show.

And after that…

Bruce promised that he was going to try and stop him, and if Jerome was going to trust any do-gooder in this city to keep their word it would be him. Anticipation is already curling within him at the idea of what Bruce may do, and what he might be capable of, the next time that they clash. 

Jerome can hardly wait.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Bruce finally talks to his family unit, because communication is important, Bruce, trust me.  
> Also, wrote a few characters that I have not written before (look at me, expanding my horizons) so I hope they turn out alright.

It’s way past visiting hours when he makes it to the hospital, but it’s almost too easy to slip past what little security is still around and Bruce is left feeling rattled as he traverses through the shadowy halls undetected. 

Not even the Green Zone is completely safe. If enough people out in the Dark Zone make up their mind to get inside the haphazard barricades and checkpoints won’t be enough to keep them all out, and inside there are so many people who would be sitting ducks.

He may not know what Jerome is going to get up to, but he’s bound to start shaking things up. Things out there are going to become even crazier, and Jerome always had a fondness for spreading the crazy around as far as he could. 

He steps into the ward room that Selina is staying in. The beds are close together, and there are no chairs to speak of, but that does nothing to stop him from sitting on the floor beside her and taking her hand in his own. He stares at the grungy tile, full of uncertainty and questions that he may never get an answer to, and eventually he feels her hand twist in his own.

“Are you going to tell me what’s got you so moody, or do I have to guess?” Her tone is flat, but her hand squeezes Bruce’s in an attempt to be reassuring. 

Bruce is silent for a long moment, wondering just how truthful he should be, and then he says, “I think I understand, now, why you were so angry with me when I kept the truth about your mother away from you.”

Selina’s fingers twitch in his grip. Bruce half-expects her to pull away, but she doesn’t.

“Yeah, okay, you’re going to have to be a little more specific than that Bruce,” her voice is a cautious whisper. “What’s been going on with you lately? You’ve been acting weirder than this whole situation calls for, which is saying a lot, and I know that Alfred doesn’t know why because he’s resorted to asking me if I’ve noticed anything.”

Of course they had both realized that there was something more going on. Bruce is almost surprised that they didn’t plan to tag-team his secrets out of him, because between the pair of them actively asking questions he’s not sure that he’d be able to keep anything to himself.

And then he wouldn’t have worried, only a few hours ago, that he would die alone in the Dark Zone with both of them ignorant to his location. 

The uneasy feeling within him grows at the memory. 

“A really important secret was kept from me, probably out of a desire to keep me from being hurt, but it did hurt me, and now I know, and I feel like I can’t tell anyone—” He squeezes her hand harder, his heart starting to race at the reminder of how solitary he’s felt, even while surrounded by the people in the Green Zone, as well as the grim isolation and lonely grief he’d experienced long before Gotham had been cut off from the mainland. “Selina, the hope left in the city becomes frailer with each passing day. It’s been nearly three weeks since the bridges blew and it seems as if no one from outside of Gotham is going to try and help the ones who’ve been left behind here.” There are so many who’d been left behind, and Bruce can’t even seem to help his best friend. Would he really be able to help anyone else? “I can’t—I can’t talk about something that will only cause more despair. I don’t want to become someone who extinguishes hope.” 

But the weight of this secret has been almost too much to bear and having to keep it has only made him angrier. 

He hates it, feeling so angry all the time. 

“Tell me, then. What hope do I have left to extinguish?”

Bruce finally looks up at her, and he wishes that he could make promises that were guaranteed to come to fruition when he sees the resigned look on her face. 

What good was having money to afford the best surgeons in the world when no surgeon other than those who had stayed behind would be willing to brave the maelstrom that was Gotham? What good was having money at all when currency was useless? What good was his going out into the Dark Zone when he had yet to find even a trace of the one directly responsible for Selina’s suffering? What good was—

“Hey,” her voice is soft. “I can see your head going into a tailspin. Stop it.”

“I’m sorry.”

Selina sighs. “I know, I know. Now tell me what’s going on. You woke me up, so you may as well entertain me.”

“I don’t think it’s really entertaining.”

“Distract me, then.”

Bruce rests his chin on the mattress, and Selina gazes back at him with one quirked eyebrow.

He wants so badly to tell someone. Anyone.

He wants so badly to feel like he’s not carrying the pressure of Jerome’s continued existence alone. A handful of people in the GCPD know, but Bruce has been avoiding the precinct as much as possible, sick at the idea of walking in there and knowing that Jerome’s body had only been housed there for a handful of hours at most before it had been covertly transported out.

Selina’s expression begins smoothing out and if Bruce doesn’t speak up soon he knows she’ll pull away, further than she’s ever been, until he’s not sure he’ll be able to reach her ever again.

And then he won’t have any friends left, will he?

“Do you remember my birthday?”

Her eyebrows furrow, and her lips press together in a frown. “You mean do I remember you ignoring your own safety because freak number one was asking you and freak number two to show up to his party? Yeah, I do.”

“That day, when Jerome fell, I tried to save him.”

“You would,” Selina comments, apparently unmoved. “The guy tried to kill you how many times? You’re absolutely unbelievable.” 

There’s a fond, though baffled, note to her tone towards the end, and Bruce takes that as a sign to continue.

“He fell anyways, even though I tried to help him. I failed, or…” Bruce’s eyebrows furrow. “I thought I did. Maybe what I did didn’t matter, or maybe it did, but there’s one thing that I know for certain.” He looks into Selina’s eyes, and sees a serious expression mirrored back at him. “He’s alive. Detective Gordon knew that he was alive, and he didn’t bother to tell me until Gotham was cut off from the mainland, and maybe it’s childish of me to hold a grudge but I wanted so badly to save him, Selina, and having him slip out of my hands was—” Devastating. Agonizing. “Something that I never want to experience again. I don’t want to fail people. I want to help people.”

He wants to become the person that he needed when he was a boy. He wants to make sure that no one has to go through what he had to. He wants to make Gotham safe for everyone who is housed within her borders.

Selina is quiet for a long moment, her face going carefully blank.

“Jerome Valeska is alive?”

“Yes.”

“And you know this for certain because Detective Gordon told you?”

“No.” Bruce shifts his gaze away, and his voice lowers. “I know for certain because I ran into him out in the Dark Zone.”

“Bruce. What the fuck,” she hisses, disbelief warring with exasperation. “Were you planning on telling anyone that you were going into the least safe parts of the city? What if you’d died out there?”

Something must show on his face, because her expression only grows livider.

“Bruce,” her voice is full of warning, and Bruce squeezes her hand in what he hopes is a reassuring manner.

“I’m okay, I made it back.”

“Tell me everything.”

“Can I… Can I wait until Alfred comes by in the morning? He should know, too.” Selina and Alfred, his two pillars of support. If he could tell the both of them what was going on then maybe he wouldn’t feel so constricted, so alone. They might not understand the way he wants someone to understand, but at least they’ll listen. Even if he had to keep secrets from everyone else, if he could at least be honest with them… Maybe he wouldn’t feel like his anger and despair were sometimes enough to eat up all the good left inside of him. “I don’t think I have it in me to tell the story twice.”

Selina narrows her eyes and purses her lips.

“Fine,” she eventually agrees. “But you are going to tell us everything. I don’t care if you keep secrets from the cops, or from whoever else may want the truth from you, but no more secrets between us.”

“No more secrets.” Already, he feels like the weight in his chest is getting lighter. “I promise.”

“Good.” 

She closes her eyes, and Bruce’s warring mind is eventually quieted by the sound of her even, soft breathing. He falls asleep sitting on the floor, propped against Selina’s hospital bed, his hand still gripping hers. 

His dreamless sleep is put to an end by the sound of a pointed cough, and when he opens his eyes Alfred is standing at the foot of Selina’s bed, looking between them both with the ghost of a smile curling at his lips.

“Good morning, Master B. Is the bed at the apartment too comfortable? Perhaps I shall replace your mattress with a block of some of the finest concrete available if it will get you to sleep at night.”

Selina stirs beside him, their hands unlink, and even though Bruce can’t see her face he can tell that she’s giving him a pointed look.

“Good morning Alfred,” he somehow manages to push himself into a standing position, even though his body twinges due to more than just the way he’d slept. “I have something I need to tell you.”

Whatever good spirits that had been visible on Alfred’s face vanish in an instant and Bruce worries that, after this, a cheerful mood will be even more difficult for him to achieve. He casts a glance over at Selina, whose blank face is like an eerie reflection to Alfred’s, and he tries to take a deep breath before the plunge. 

Explaining is a strange amalgamation of relief and apprehension. His attempt to save Jerome, the way he’d felt in the aftermath. He’d thought, before, that the only one who he might ever be able to talk to about his strange grief was Jeremiah. And maybe Alfred and Selina don’t entirely fathom what he’d felt, maybe they think that Bruce’s heart is just a bit too big, or that he’s a bit too soft for the wretched world they live in, but they listen, and they don’t interrupt, and everything starts spilling out of him in a rush, until he finally reaches the part about running into Jerome last night.

Neither of them looks happy about Bruce’s encounter. Even less so when, in an effort to be more transparent than he would usually be comfortable with as if to make up for his recent bout of secrecy, he lifts up his shirt to show the burns on his side. The skin is pink and raw, and Alfred starts cursing under his breath at the sight of it.

“He’s out there. I’ve been looking for them both for weeks, but this is the first time I’ve seen either of them. Jeremiah’s hidden himself away and I don’t know if I can find him. It took Jerome years to find him. But Jerome… Neither of them can be left to their own devices, but Jerome is tangible, and someone who I’ve survived before.” 

Jerome is a reasonable goal to focus his attentions on. If he keeps splitting his focus between the twins when he has yet to hear so much as a whisper about Jeremiah then there was no way that he could find the both of them. 

He needs to focus on things one at a time.

And Jerome is first on his list. 

“This is something that I have to do,” he finishes bluntly. “I have to find them. I have to stop them before they can do anything else.”

“What you have to do is get some antibiotic ointment on those burns before you get an infection,” Alfred tells him, crossing his arms. “What you have to do is tell me—us,” he amends quickly, “what your plans are before you go running headfirst into danger. There are people here who will miss you if you disappear.”

“I know.” Bruce casts his eyes down. “I’m sorry. I should have told the both of you everything sooner than this. I just—it’s difficult for me, sometimes, to talk about what’s going on in my head, and lately I’ve felt even more—” Angry. Conflicted. Confused. Lonely. “—like I can’t speak up. The people left here are already wearing down, what would happen if they knew the truth?”

With Jerome and Jeremiah both at large was reunification even within the realms of possibility? 

“So you decided to bear the brunt of it yourself? Foolish boy,” Alfred mutters, but he steps forward to bring Bruce into a gentle hug, careful not to brush against his wounded side. Bruce gratefully leans into the embrace.

“You guys are so sappy,” Selina cuts in, though her tone lacks bite. “You know, Barbara must have spent a lot of time with Jerome before his first death, Tabitha too. Maybe they’d know something about where in the Dark Zone he might be hanging out. He mentioned going back to Arkham, but you’d be toast if you went out there by yourself.”

“I was under the impression that the Sirens Club has a pretty strict ‘no men’ policy,” Bruce says as Alfred steps back. “I don’t think we’re nearly close enough that they’d make an exception for me.”

“I’ve heard that guys are okay, as long as they pay their way in with information. That’s what Barbara deals in, nowadays.”

Alfred throws her a look, seeming to be surprised not at the information, but that Selina was aware of it. “How’d you know that?”

Maybe Bruce has been missing out on more than he knows by trying to avoid the precinct as much as he can. 

“What’s a girl have to do around here other than eavesdrop?” Selina shifts, her face disappearing from view. “If you don’t want to go, whatever. Do what you want.”

“I’ll try.”

They may not be close, but he’s almost certain that Barbara and Tabitha won’t try to gut him on sight, at least, and if they had any insight at all to where Jerome might be spending his time it would be worth the trip.

“I’ll see you tonight Selina.”

“Try not to bite off more than you can chew Bruce.”

“I’ll try,” he repeats softly. 

He and Alfred walk out of the room, and Alfred somehow manages to track down a nurse to get a tube of antibiotic ointment and presses it into Bruce’s hand.

“You won’t be able to do anyone any good if you get a fever from your injuries, Master B. I know how much you worry about other people, and it’s an important part of who you are, but you’ve got to take care of yourself, too.”

“I know.”

It’s difficult, though. Sometimes the problems of others seem to completely dwarf his own.

“Bruce, you know that I’m always in your corner, right?” Alfred waits until Bruce nods in confirmation. “And I know that you’re hurt, because I know what you were like in the weeks after Jerome Valeska’s death, too. I knew that something was bothering you after we all thought he died, even if I wasn’t sure what. But Bruce, you can’t just ignore Detective Gordon for the rest of your life.”

Bruce closes his eyes and sighs.

“I know.”

“I’m not telling you to forgive him, and you’re allowed to be angry that he kept something so important to you a secret, but the way you’ve been keeping everything locked inside isn’t healthy. You need to let it out, one way or another, and maybe talking to him will help.”

‘It’s hard to forgive,’ Bruce had told Selina once, back when her mother was kicking around and pretending that she wanted to rekindle their family ties. ‘It may be the hardest thing any of us have to do in this life.’

It is. It is without a doubt the hardest thing to do. 

“Will you be there with me?”

Alfred’s gaze softens.

“I’ll always be right where you need me, Master B.”

Bruce wraps his arms around Alfred’s waist again, briefer this time. “Thank you. I’ll think about it.”

There is someone he wants to see at the precinct, anyways, if he is going to stop making an effort at actively avoiding it. 

He’d asked Lucius, back when he still thought that Jerome’s legacy was meant to be the comrades that he’d left behind, about possible additions to his gear.

He thinks it’s time to find out if his requests ever bore fruit. 

But first, he has something else to focus his attentions on.

He remembers the feeling of Barbara’s hands around his own on the hilt of the knife that brought the end the Ra’s al Ghul. He wonders if that shared experience will be enough that she’ll answer his questions without requiring too many answers.

It’s a stretch, but he has to hold on to hope.

If he loses his hope, he’s not sure where he’ll be. 

Walking into the technically closed Sirens Club when he has such a personally complicated history with the location—his drunken billionaire brat days and Ra’s, Ra’s, Ra’s, he was standing right there after he’d been revived—is more unnerving for him that heading out into the Dark Zone.

Barbara is doing work behind the bar to prepare for the club’s opening in a few hours, and Bruce allows his footfalls to become heavier as he approaches, not wanting to startle her.

And not wanting to get shot at for startling her, too.

Her eyes flick upwards, and she pauses her movements.

“Hello Miss Kean.” He spots movement in the shadows from the corner of his eye, and throws out an additional greeting of, “ladies.”

Barbara’s lips quirk. Bruce isn’t familiar enough with her to tell if it’s from amusement or annoyance.

“Sorry if you missed the newsflash, Bruce, but men don’t drink free here. Not to mention that I ran out of lemonade for the underaged.” She leans against the bar top, her chin propped up on her palm, and regards him coolly. “Is there a reason why you came out this way? I don’t imagine it’s to rehash the past.”

“I thought we could make an exchange. Information for information. That’s what you deal in now, correct?”

“I take information. I don’t give it away easily.” Her sharp eyes dart to the side, and Bruce can hear footsteps coming up behind him.

Barbara smiles, a warmth reaching her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and when Bruce casts a glance to the side he’s not entirely surprised to see Tabitha, though she appears more than a little startled to see him.

“Bruce,” she greets, her tone guarded like she can’t decide whether or not she’s happy to see him. Her eyes flick over to Barbara, then back to him, and something in her expression shifts as she asks, “How’s Selina doing?”

Tabitha seems genuinely concerned, although she had been more than adept at the art of deception back when her brother was still alive and plotting to get close enough to Bruce to strip everything away from him, including his life.

But… Bruce’s eyes drift over to Barbara, who’s a perfect picture of nonchalance. Almost too perfect, really. 

Selina has a history with these two that Bruce had never been fully privy to. There was trust in their relationship, and Bruce knows that Selina doesn’t trust easily. Perhaps, at least in this case, Barbara and Tabitha were just as concerned as Bruce was, just better at hiding it. 

Maybe they were even more concerned, because as far as Bruce knows no one except for himself and Alfred visit Selina at the hospital. They might not have any idea about her progression, or lack thereof. 

“Her physical pain is being managed, and she’s medically stable,” he begins carefully, not sure how much he should make known. But these are Selina’s friends, and they should know that everyone is trying their best to take care of her. “But her body isn’t the only thing that Jeremiah’s bullet damaged. Alfred and I are looking after her too, but…” He looks Tabitha in the eyes, and he thinks that she’ll take what he says to heart. “It might be nice if you came to visit her sometime.”

“Yeah,” Barbara snorts, pouring something dark into a glass in front of her. “I bet Jim would love me and Tabby hanging around right under his nose.”

“Detective Gordon’s feelings on the matter are not my concern.”

There is, perhaps, still an edge of bitterness in his tone, because Barbara’s attention snaps onto him, her eyes narrowed as if she’s sizing him up for the first time. Bruce doesn’t allow himself to feel intimidated. He’s been closely examined by more nefarious people during more emotionally distressing situations.

“It might do Selina some good if you came to see her, is all that I’m saying,” He comments as Tabitha makes her way over to Barbara’s side. The pair of them, together, look indomitable. A force to be reckoned with, even while not taking into account the League of Shadows members that considered Barbara their leader. “You both know her in ways that I don’t, so maybe you can help her in ways that I can’t.”

If Barbara is surprised by his frankness she hides it well. “I’ll confess, it is nice when men admit that they’re not the best at everything.”

I never claimed to be, Bruce wants to say, but he holds it back because Barbara looks like she’s starting to relax, and whether it’s because Tabitha is now beside her or because of Bruce’s honesty, he doesn’t want to put her on guard.

Tabitha leans in to whisper something in Barbara’s ear, and Barbara sighs.

“Fine, Tabby.” She turns and presses her lips to Tabitha’s cheek before her attention settles on Bruce again, bringing her half-full glass to her lips. “What info do you have that you think might be of use for me?”

He may as well not beat around the bush.

“Jerome Valeska is alive.”

Barbara, to her credit, doesn’t choke on her drink. She does, however, pause in the midst of a sip and very slowly sets her glass down.

“He was brought back? Again?”

“I’m told that he didn’t have a pulse after his fall, but maybe whoever checked just hadn’t been very thorough in their examination, or maybe they had known that he was still alive but wanted to keep it a secret. It matters little, I suppose, when the end result stays the same.” Bruce walks forward and lays his hands out against the countertop. “You knew him when you were in Arkham together, and you both spent time with him after that first Arkham breakout. You were obviously close enough to work together, during—” His hand lifts up, fingers tracing a faded white line on his neck. “—the night of Jerome’s first death. Do you have any idea where in the Dark Zone he might go?”

“Jerome isn’t a base of operations kind of guy. He’s the sort who always needs to be on the move.” Barbara hums under her breath. “I’ve heard there have been rumors going around that some people think Jerome’s ghost is driving people crazy out there, though most believe it’s just a copy-cat trying to incite more madness. It might take a few days for me to get fresh intel on the most recent occurrences, but I can look into it.”

“Thank you. I’ll be back in a few days.” He starts walking away, but the sound of Tabitha’s voice makes him pause before he gets through the door.

“Bruce?”

He turns.

“Say hello to Selina.” Tabitha shares a look with Barbara that Bruce can’t read before adding, “from the both of us.”

“I will,” he promises.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Ecco knows what's up, so I guess I'm going to tag these pairings now. Writing all the gen relationship building was fun, but gosh, I do eventually want to write some kissing, fffffff.
> 
> Alsoooo, since I'm writing all of this unrecorded time between season 4 and 5 anyways, Ecco and Jeremiah's relationship is not going to be quite so unbalanced. Like, he obviously cared about her pre-spray, and I don't think Jeremiah-I-am-nothing-if-not-sane-Valeska would forget and disregard how loyal she's been for years. So, yeah, not as friendly as Lego Batman's Harley and Joker, but different than most canon Harleys and Jokers. 
> 
> Life is about to get _reeeeeal_ hectic for me over the next week and it's unlikely that I'll have much time at my computer, so this'll have to tide you over until I get some free time, whenever that may be. To amuse yourselves during my absence think of the terrible courting methods that either Valeska would use to try and woo Bruce. Awful. Hilarious. Bruce would like to file a restraining order, please. Jim and Alfred are going to team up to kick some ass. The whole shebang. 
> 
> I am so sorry for this huge author's note, anyways, onwards.

Some copycat has been going around lately getting the remaining Maniax who had drifted apart after the fall of their leader, then began joining other gangs after the fall of the bridges, all riled up by making them believe that his ghost was still among them.

Or maybe they thought that he was still alive, even after they’d dug up his corpse.

Ecco doesn’t bother herself with the trivial details; any person who had chosen Jerome over Jeremiah had chosen wrong and of course they would take any sign, however vague, that their mad leader was back as the gospel truth. There are rumours starting to spread; whispers about uncanny laughs in the dark, and smiles carved into faces, and the shadow of someone watching over the Dark Zone from rooftops.

Ecco does her best to keep such baseless gossip from the boss since he has more important things to worry about now that he was finally starting to build his following. He’d been so morose that first week, when it was just the two of them out here. So miserable that Ecco had almost contemplated slipping into the Green Zone to take, by force if necessary, the one thing that was guaranteed to put a smile on his face. Now that people are seeking him out through her, rightfully looking to him for guidance, he doesn’t have the time to concern himself with wild speculation, and so Ecco takes initiative to keep away the lies that would only distract him from his work.

But this… She can’t keep the entirety of this from him, even if it is a lie. 

Because Jeremiah had told her, specifically, to inform him about all of the news that anyone brought her about Bruce Wayne.

She’ll have to pick apart the truth from the deception before she allows it to pass on. 

One of Jeremiah’s first disciples, after her, of course, is knelt on the ground in front of her. His hands are clasped as if in prayer, or perhaps just in a plea for her to believe him.

“I wasn’t seeing things, I swear. I saw him. I saw Jerome Valeska with Bruce Wayne out in the Dark Zone.”

Ecco cocks her head. “Are you sure about that?”

Disbelief is thick on her tongue, and on her face. Jeremiah’s followers should know better than this, should know better than to believe in the resurrection of a false-God. It makes her fingers twitch. 

“Well,” he falters, and Ecco holds back a gusting sigh, “it was dark, and I was watching through a pretty grimy window, but—but the laugh. I know Jerome’s laugh. Everyone in Gotham does.”

What an irritating thing to say; not to mention false. The citizens of Gotham are forgetting all about Jerome now. And why shouldn’t they? There were more important people to focus their attentions on. The only ones who kept him in their thoughts were those who were once devoted to him.

Perhaps she will have to come up with a special test of faith to ensure that those who are pledging to follow Jeremiah are actually worthy of following him. She doesn’t want their ranks filled with former Maniax, after all.

The ones that Jeremiah had first converted had been so quick to turn on him. Why would any of the others be different?

“That’s not proof enough, anyone can mimic the laugh of a mad man. I will tell Jeremiah that Bruce Wayne was spotted out in the Dark Zone, though. You’ve done very well by bringing that to my attention.” She lays a hand under his chin, tilting his head up to look at her. “But Jerome Valeska is dead; long live Jeremiah.”

“Long live Jeremiah,” he repeats, nearly breathless in his devotion.

“Now go and keep an eye out for Bruce again. Anything that you see or hear is important, so be more vigilant next time. And. Do. Not. Bring me baseless rumours again.” Her tone is as sharp as a knife’s edge, and his eyes widen in rightful fear. “Certainty is the key to all, doubt is the downfall of many, and tall tales should be forgotten, not passed on like truths. Understand?” 

He nods fervently, and Ecco turns to leave him in the metaphorical dust.

“Oh. And tell the others to get to work on cleaning out the sanctuary, I want to start the services soon.”

“Of course.”

Jeremiah is a God in this new age, and so he deserves the very best church.

Ecco begins her solitary climb, no one else is allowed past the main floor yet, not until everything is perfectly in place to Jeremiah’s own specifications. From the second floor she makes her way into what was once a room used for children’s Sunday school, and from there she takes another door which leads up a narrow staircase, to an office that was abandoned long before the church itself had been.

She knocks, and a voice from the other side says, “enter.”

Ecco steps inside and smiles at the sight of Jeremiah with diagrams and blueprints spread out on the desk in front of him. Today must be a good day, for his focus to be solely on work.

She almost regrets having to bring Bruce up, which will surely distract him from his current tasks, but the repercussions of not immediately sharing news of Bruce with him… Well, he wouldn’t like it at all, and that is enough for her.

“I have news, boss.”

“Good. I’ve been wondering if finishing up the church would really take so much longer than planned. We’ll have to recruit more followers soon if I am to get anything done on time.”

“Not about our progress on the church. It’s about Bruce Wayne.”

Though Jeremiah’s back is to her Ecco can see the way his entire presence shifts at the mention of the name.

“Bruce?” His voice is gentle, almost precious, in a way. “Bruce, yes, Bruce.” He turns around, hands bracing themselves on the desktop on either side of him. With his body now shifted slightly to the side Ecco can make out an aged, yellowed newspaper spread out along with his blueprints, and her eyebrows furrow in brief confusion before her attention locks back onto him. He doesn’t look at her, instead he stares out the lone window of the office with something thoughtful and distant in his gaze. “Do you suppose that he’s been thinking about me?”

“Every day and every night, boss.” This was, regretfully, a familiar song and dance. Jeremiah was so poised and confident, but something about him seemed to crumple whenever Bruce was mentioned, and he needed reassurance that shouldn’t have been necessary because who wasn’t thinking about Jeremiah, these days? “Gotham is as it is because of you. Everywhere he turns to look he sees what you have touched, what you have changed. No one can escape their thoughts of you, him least of all.”

Jeremiah straightens himself out. “Yes. Of course, you’re right. But still…”

“You miss him.”

“Yes,” he admits in a soft voice, then he giggles. “Yes, yes,” He repeats in a firmer tone. “Though that almost seems too casual of a way to put it. He’s my very best friend, after all. I feel… Incomplete, without him here with me. We were meant to stay together, we were meant to build his Dark Island together.”

“You have me.”

Something in Jeremiah’s expression flickers but soon he’s smiling, small and genuine. 

“Yes, Ecco my sweet echo. I do still have you, don’t I?” He holds a hand out to her and she eagerly takes it, happy to have made him smile. “Now, what was it that you were going to tell me about Bruce?”

“Someone saw him out in the Dark Zone again. That’s the third time this week that we know about.”

Jeremiah drops her hand and goes still, all expression disappearing from his face. He almost looks as though he’s stopped breathing.

Maybe he’s worried that Bruce will get himself hurt out here. He was just one teenager, after all, and there are so many vile people, like whatever is left of Jerome’s former Maniax, wandering freely in the Dark Zone.

“I bet he’s been trying to find you, boss,” Ecco says to reassure him, hoping to bring his smile back. “Remember those first few days, when a couple of sniveling low-lives found me so that they could deliver the message that he was looking for you? I’m sure he’s still at it. He misses you, too.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I know so, boss. How could he not? Look at all that you’ve done for him.”

Jeremiah’s gaze is drawn towards the window again. Miles away, in that direction, lies the Green Zone. Miles away, in that direction, is Bruce.

It’s almost heartbreaking, in a way.

“Sometimes it feels like it’s not enough. I feel like I should be doing more.”

“If he doesn’t appreciate what you’ve done so far, then maybe he doesn’t deserve more.”

Something dark flashes across Jeremiah’s face, but Ecco doesn’t let herself react to it.

Perhaps she should know better than to say such things about Bruce, but Jeremiah’s wellbeing and feelings, not Bruce’s, are her priority. It’s disheartening, sometimes, to have Jeremiah so caught up in someone who isn’t even here to help him. Someone who hadn’t been able to fully appreciate Jeremiah’s bombs, or his plans, or the way he was able to draw people towards him; a God amongst mortals. 

“You don’t understand,” he tells her, his tone nearly frigid. Ecco does understand, though.

Jeremiah is hurt. Jeremiah is in love.

Jeremiah is in love with the one whose absence causes him pain. 

“We are two of a kind, he and I. A set. A pair not meant to be parted.” He stops, something gleams behind his eyes, and then he’s smiling again. He lays a hand upon her cheek, his short-lived irritation disappearing quickly, as it is wont to do.

Jeremiah is volatile, but harmless. Or at least harmless to her. Others were not so lucky. 

“He doesn’t understand it either, though,” Jeremiah tells her softly. “Not yet. I, alone, know of the potential within him, the potential that I can unlock. Together we can be our best selves.”

Ecco thinks that Jeremiah is already his best self, no Bruce needed, but she rests her face against his palm and keeps that thought to herself.

One simply does not argue about love, especially with the ones who feel it so keenly. 

“I just wish there was some way to make him see how important we are to each other.”

“You’ll think of something, boss.”

“Yes. Yes I will.” His hand falls away, and he turns back to the papers laid out in front of him. He braces his hands on either side of the newspaper, and Ecco wishes that she’d gotten a better look at it. “Keep an ear out for any more news of Bruce coming out into the dark, won’t you?”

“Of course. Anything I hear about him, you’ll be the first to know.”

The only one to know, really. She wasn’t going to go around initiating conversations about the billionaire with anyone else.

“Thank you Ecco.”

“It’s no problem, boss.”

She shuts the door behind her and gets back to work.

Jeremiah is a God, and she is his prophet. She shall spread his faith and his gospel so that soon all of Gotham will prostrate themselves before him.

Even— _especially_ —Bruce Wayne. 

And then, with Jeremiah blissfully content at long last, he can do all that he is meant to.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand I'm back! I had so much fun with this chapter, there's some good dynamics in here. :)
> 
> Last chapter: Ecco knows what's up. This chapter: Barbara has a strong suspicion about what's up.

Jonathan carefully measures out one component of his fear-toxin, and he finds himself becoming incredibly aware of the silence around him.

It has never been this quiet before.

Someone else, someone lesser, might have found themselves worried about this development, especially considering that Jonathan has felt eyes on him on more than one occasion without being able to catch sight of who was doing the watching. But Jonathan listens to his followers when they think they’re only talking amongst themselves, and he knows what’s been driving them crazy lately.

And he knows, with certainty, what it all means. 

What this silence finally signals. 

He’s not sure how it happened, or how it managed to stay a secret for so long, but the being that’s been haunting his acolytes is more than a ghost. 

Jerome _would_ find it funny to try and drive Jonathan’s followers mad with fear. That’s how he knows that it can’t be a copy-cat, or one of Jerome’s Maniax trying to pay homage to his memory. Anyone else, anyone who’d never worked closely with Jerome and who didn’t have some idea of the way his twisted mind worked, would have remembered that he and Jonathan had partnered together, and they would have kept a respectful distance between themselves and the Scarecrow. 

Jerome, so overly familiar with him even at their very first meeting, would never dismiss an opportunity to cause Jonathan trouble.

He’s almost how Jonathan imagines an older brother is supposed to be. Irritating, but… Good to have around on occasion. Jonathan had been pleased when he’d realized that all of the commotion going on lately was a sign that Jerome was alive.

It was difficult to find people who understood him, who understood his vision. Even some of his followers don’t fully realize the scope of his desires. 

The hair on the back of his neck stands up. When he strains his ears he can hear nearly silent footfalls. 

Jonathan doesn’t turn around and he continues working, as if unaware of this new development.

Jerome isn’t the only one who’s allowed to have fun, after all. 

He waits, until he’s absolutely sure that the presence behind him is winding up for their big finish, and then he says,

“I know you’re there, Jerome.”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then a heavy, disappointed sigh fills up the stillness behind him. He doesn’t turn around, but he doesn’t have to.

Jerome slinks beside him, leaning against his worktable with his lips twisted into a dramatic frown.

“You couldn’t have at least pretended to act surprised?”

“No.”

Jerome snorts, and his frown morphs quickly into a smirk. “I guess I should have expected that from you, Scarecrow. You’re a tough nut to crack.”

Jonathan’s hands pause in their work.

That was, essentially, an outright compliment. 

Jerome is in a good mood but, since his scheme had evolved into something crazier than originally planned with Gotham now truly cut off from anyone who might help restore order to the city, that was hardly a surprise. Plus, he must have been getting a kick out of going around and playing ghost, inciting panic in the masses. 

There must be more than that, though. 

Jonathan thinks that he’s familiar enough with Jerome’s particular kind of unexpectedly thorough groundwork—such as lying in wait for months in Arkham to find the very best of the worst to team up with—that he can predict that Jerome has been planning something by not immediately making his survival known.

And he is, admittedly, curious as to what Jerome has come up with to drive Gotham into further darkness. Jerome was always madly creative when it came to making and reaching goals. 

“I assume you’ve been scheming in your free time?”

“Oh, I have plenty of schemes all the time,” Jerome replies with a grin. “Just the other day I was contemplating pouring our special joker-toxin into the river to see if the fish ended up having the same deformed smiles as our test subjects of old.” He snickers. “I thought to myself; maybe I can apply for a copyright. It’s always nice to have some extra cash on hand, you know? But, unfortunately, I’m not sure if there are any lawyers left in this city to put that through for me.”

Jonathan slowly processes that, because Jerome is odd enough that he might not be joking.

Smiling fish.

What a terrible waste. 

“That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

Jerome slaps his shoulder in mock offence. If he were anyone else Jonathan would be cutting the offending limb right off. 

“Still so grimly serious, eh? I guess some things never change.” Jerome straightens out and his grin widens as he says, “Let’s get to the point then, shall we? I require a small—miniscule really, in the grand scheme of things—favour.”

“And what would I get in return?”

“Other than the immeasurable joy of working with me again? The chance to make this city spiral even further into chaos, and with that chaos comes your main prerogative; terror in the hearts of the masses.” 

And that—

Well, Jonathan doesn’t doubt that for a second. Jerome’s already striking fear into the hearts of people in the Dark Zone and they didn’t even know that he was still alive and thus much, much more dangerous than a ghost-story could ever be. 

“What do you suppose,” Jerome continues with a theatric air, “that the majority of my surviving followers have been getting up to since my alleged death?”

“I haven’t bothered to keep track.”

Jerome huffs in a put-upon way, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. 

“I woke up the dark inside of them,” he states with the kind of certainty that was well-deserved. Jonathan had seen the footage of Jerome within the GCPD all those years ago, and he knew just how deeply it had affected the ones who would eventually come to think of Jerome as their leader. 

He, just like everyone else in this city, remembered what happened that night in Gotham when the lights went out.

Jerome had a true talent for bringing out the worst in people.

“I fanned the flames of their desire for blood and destruction and mayhem. I gave them permission to carry out their darkest impulses. With me out of the picture, and with the need to continue whetting their appetite, they drifted towards gangs where they could continue on without having to hide what they’d become. But they were mine, first, and they’re still loyal to my memory. I’ve seen them, recounting tales of my ghost in the dark, looking down at the smiles that I’ve carved into the faces of their fallen brethren and grinning to themselves. I’m going to get what’s left of my followers back, Scarecrow, and I’ll convert even more while I’m at it. I’ve laid a foundation, but I need a few more hands to really get the avalanche started.” 

If he was not who he was, not what he was, Jonathan wouldn’t believe him for a second.

But he remembers the night when Jerome first came back from the dead, and how easily he’d made the entire city descend into anarchy. Jerome’s confidence isn’t born from simple egotism, there’s validity to it. 

A second resurrection, when Gotham was already in turmoil… Could the city even survive such a thing?

Jonathan tries not to sound too interested as he asks, “And then what?”

“Well, people are getting a little too cozy out here, don’t you think? This city hasn’t become nearly crazy enough; gang violence and turf wars were regular occurrences in Gotham long before me. Sure, there are a handful of brutes here and there, and my Horribles, of course, that are really drawing out the latent insanity of this city, but...” Jerome’s eyes flash with vivid irritation. “It’s not enough. Some people are becoming grim pillars in their dark little communities and providing an amount of structure that I’d rather didn’t exist. Any stability is bad stability, it goes against everything that I wanted. It’s not even just Detective Gordon in the Green Zone, though I’ll be dealing with that stubborn stronghold of false reassurance sooner or later…”

His smile twists into something strangely genuine, and there’s a hint of excitement in his tone that definitely was not there before. It’s just enough to make Jonathan wonder what exactly Jerome was so thrilled about. 

He’d find out, sooner or later.

“But there are too many forces out here who aren’t doing enough to rip the city apart,” Jerome states, his expression and voice going flat as his focus shifts onto his current business. “There are even traitors to the cause who think that they’re safe just because they’ve holed themselves up in city hall and have enough bullets that most of the monsters out here would think twice about touching them.”

Jonathan’s fingers flex at the memory of Oswald’s disloyalty. Jerome’s keen eyes catch the slight movement and his ensuing grin is a ghastly sight. 

“Penguin is starting to believe that he’s untouchable. It’s time for someone to topple him over, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Jonathan finds himself saying, “yes I do.”

Whatever favour Jerome asked of him would be a small price to pay for Oswald Cobblepot to eventually get what was coming to him.

x-x-x

The muted sound of laugher makes Bruce pause just outside of the doorway.

He hasn’t heard that from anyone other than Jerome, whose laughter absolutely did not count as a purely joyous expression, in what feels like ages.

He stands at the edge of the doorframe and peers inside.

Tabitha is sitting on the edge of Selina’s bed, smiling down at her in the same sincere way that she smiles at Barbara while whispering something in her ear. Selina’s eyes gleam at whatever it is that Tabitha has told her, and Bruce doesn’t care what it is that she’s said, even if it’s making promises to break both of Jeremiah’s legs, because Selina is smiling and laughing, and Bruce has been so worried about her for so long. 

“Watching people from doorways, huh? Getting to be a bit spooky, Bruce.”

Bruce turns his head slightly to see Barbara smirking at him. He doesn’t let himself feel too put out by it.

“I’d hate to interrupt; it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Selina in such high spirits. I realize that it’s for her sake and not mine, but thank you for coming all the same.”

Barbara waves off his thanks carelessly. “I didn’t only come for a visit. Two birds, one stone. If you show up at my club again and someone catches sight of you I feel like my reputation as a ruthless business woman may be called into question. You don’t exactly fit in with my usual clientele.” 

Bruce turns fully towards her, standing up a little taller.

“You have information?”

“I do.” 

Barbara’s gaze drifts past him for a moment, and something cold in her eyes melts away when she looks at Tabitha and Selina. 

He’s not in the room, but Bruce feels like he’s intruding all the same.

Then Barbara’s eyes flick back to him and her usual, cool look resurfaces.

“Most of the rumours about Jerome’s ghost lately have been coming from the northern part of the city, specifically where Scarecrow has apparently been hanging around.” Barbara crosses her arms and looks Bruce up and down like she’s trying to solve some sort of puzzle. “Just because Jerome feels friendly towards someone doesn’t mean he’ll resist toying with them, it just means they’re more likely to survive the experience.”

Something about the way she says it, and the way she’s looking at him, makes Bruce go a little tense. 

“Are you trying to imply something, Miss Kean?”

“Do you think that I’m implying something?” She raises an eyebrow. “You’d know better than me the kinds of games that Jerome has played with you. I was there for the benefit, but not for anything else.” She steps closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And there was something else, wasn’t there?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“Consider it a form of repayment for the information, then.” She smiles, looking deceptively harmless as her eyes gleam with a particular kind of amusement. “I’m curious why Jerome seemed preoccupied with tormenting you. He would have lost interest in most people, whether he’d once tried to kill them or not, by the time he wanted to draw out his freak brother.” Her expression pinches in distaste at the mention of Jeremiah. “But he wanted the both of you up on that stage with him. Something about you must have piqued his interest if you were on his mind for as long as you must have been.” 

Bruce’s lips purse into a frown at the tone Barbara uses.

Oddly, and purposefully, suggestive. As if Bruce had gone out of his way to make Jerome find him interesting.

He’d much rather have been ignored. His life might have a shred more normalcy if he had been.

“If I tell you, you’ll call us even?”

He’d rather not feel indebted to anyone, especially to someone who he might need again. Bruce couldn’t be everywhere at once, and even if he was going to focus his attention on Jerome that didn’t mean that he wanted sightings or rumours about Jeremiah to slip past his notice.

Being on decent terms with someone who was able to collect information from anyone about anything would likely benefit him.

“Sure thing, kiddo.”

His frown deepens at the nickname, and Barbara smirks at his reaction.

He doesn’t have to tell her everything, or the worst things. He only needs to give one piece of the puzzle away, and Jerome’s takeover of the city is well-documented enough that he won’t be revealing too much.

“The night when Jerome first came back from the dead, when the lights went out and he and his Maniax held the city hostage, he took me to the twisted carnival that he and his followers had created and he tried to kill me for a second time. He failed, obviously.” And Bruce had held him down, had made him bleed, had almost been his end. “I don’t imagine that there are many people who have survived him twice.”

Or who, at a later meeting, told him not to take the failure personally. 

Bruce wonders just how the future might have unfolded if he’d never started that conversation with Jerome back in Arkham.

Perhaps Jerome would have forgotten all about him by the time he started looking for Jeremiah. 

Barbara doesn’t look too surprised. But then again, she’d known Ra’s, had known what Bruce was to Ra’s, had held the knife with him in order to kill Ra’s, so maybe the fact that Bruce had managed to live through two rounds of Jerome’s deadly intent wasn’t as bewildering to her as it might be for someone who didn’t know that Bruce was more than he appeared. 

“I don’t think there are many people who’ve survived him once, kid. You’re an outlier.” 

She says it like it’s a compliment. 

Bruce supposes that, in a way, it is. 

Barbara’s attention drifts away from him again, and Bruce steps further from the door.

He doesn’t want to disturb this rare, much-needed visit. He can come back to see Selina later.

“Take care, Miss Kean,” he says in farewell, and Barbara’s lips purse.

“Calling me Miss Kean isn’t much better than calling me ma’am. Call me Barbara. I think we’re familiar enough for that by now, don’t you?” There’s something meaningful in her gaze, and Bruce remembers—

Her hands over his on the hilt of the knife. 

Ra’s crumpling and turning to ashes before them both, destroyed by the unlikely pair that he hadn’t seen coming. 

His relief that he hadn’t been alone, the second time.

Ra’s had manipulated and used them both, and had subsequently been ended by them both. 

They had more in common than their friendship with Selina, after all.

“I suppose you’re right, Barbara.”

Her lips quirk in the way that Bruce still isn’t sure how to read, but he’s starting to think that maybe it’s amusement.

“I’ll see you around, Bruce,” she says as she brushes past him to enter the hospital room.

Bruce can’t see her, but he hears her voice light up with something as she greets Selina.

A smile makes its way onto his face as he walks away. 

And some of the dark, roiling anger inside of him settles.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have come to the amazing conclusion that since Ecco is obviously Jeremiah's wingman, then that means Jonathan is Jerome's wingman. (Sadly no one in that little quad knows what a normal date is supposed to be like so Bruce is eventually going to have to deal with a lot of nonsense. Big surprise there, eh?) 
> 
> Things are going to start picking up next chapter, so I'll finally be honing in our focus on Bruce and ~~his secret admirers~~ the Valeskas, and I must say I'm pretty happy with how I've set up everyone so far. At least we've got a vague idea of what people in the background are doing so it won't be too shocking to see them milling around, lol.

Jeremiah looks upon his completed sketch and he finally feels as if he’s figured it all out.

For too long he’s been comparing himself to Jerome when it came to their separate impacts on Bruce’s life. Were it not for Jerome he and Bruce would not have met, and Jerome had written in his mad diary about the darkness in Bruce which he wanted, which he failed, in bringing to the surface. Perhaps those are the reasons why Jeremiah has been giving Jerome more credit than is due. 

Jeremiah, of course, still wants to do what his brother could not. He has to do what his brother could not. He cannot bear even the idea of being stuck in Jerome’s shadow for anything, especially not when it came to Bruce. Jerome was a madman who terrorized Bruce for his own deranged fun and had been unsuccessful in unleashing his full potential. He probably hadn’t even been completely cognizant of Bruce’s potential, not in the way that Jeremiah was. He’d only seen something twisted inside of Bruce but had no idea what bringing it forth could lead to.

But Jeremiah knows; he knows that Bruce could be so strong. He closes his eyes and sees what Bruce could become with just the slightest, most gentle push. Jeremiah is more than willing to take him by the hand and lead him down the path that he is meant to go.

Together.

How they’re meant to be. 

But for all that Jeremiah must admit that Jerome and Bruce have a history that he still, infuriatingly, doesn’t know the whole scope of, and that his brother and Bruce had seemingly had the occasional crossing of paths during which Jerome had somehow managed to quell his disturbed blood lust, Jerome was not the only person before Jeremiah who made a difference to Bruce’s life.

No. The person who was Jeremiah’s real competition when it came to importance, to influence, to becoming the one who Bruce thought of every day and every night and could never never never forget…

Was just some random gunman in an alley.

Who was Jerome, whose claim to fame was that he’d tried to kill Bruce and failed more than once, when compared with the one who had killed Bruce’s parents right in front of him?

A no one. Forgettable. Nothing. 

Jeremiah should have realized this before. He should have pushed Jerome’s clinging memory aside weeks ago in order to focus on the man who’d shifted Bruce’s entire world off of its axis.

Some lowly Gotham criminal with a gun had shaken Bruce’s foundations long before either Valeska had gotten caught up in him. Jeremiah, in his constant quest to know all that there possibly was to know about Bruce, has read article upon article about the Wayne murders, and he’s come to know, instinctively, that that had been the most important day in Bruce’s life.

It had nothing to do with Jerome.

But nothing to do with him, either.

And that… That wouldn’t do. How could Jeremiah, destined to be Bruce’s very best friend, not be a part of Bruce’s most important day? He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t accept it.

But, slowly and insidiously, an idea had come together in his mind; just as wonderful and beautiful as his unaccomplished maze, and just as time-consuming.

If he wants to get it done on time he needs to start post-haste.

He walks to the other side of the desk in the office that he’s taken as his own, and though his gaze is, as always, drawn to the window that faces the direction where Bruce resides from the corner of his eye he sees Ecco moving in close to gaze over his plans.

“I’ve mapped out a tunnel going under the river. It’s going to take me directly—" To the place where Bruce grew up, to where Bruce had all of his happiest memories, to where Bruce must have felt his most despondent and alone in the wake of his greatest tragedy. Jeremiah feels almost lightheaded at the thought of stepping into a place so steeped with Bruce’s personal history. Seeing what he had seen every day of his life. Touching what he had touched every day of his life. His heart beats a little faster at the thought of it. “—to Wayne Manor.”

Ecco nods. A small smile starts curling at the edge of her mouth as if she’s pleased.

Jeremiah is pleased, too. Nearly euphoric, even. 

“It’s going to be difficult work,” he continues fervently, “I’m sure you understand. Digging a subterranean tunnel by hand is a grueling undertaking that we cannot undergo alone.” Not to mention that they were above doing such toilsome work. Jeremiah has studied the depth of the river, has plotted the course, and will ensure that the tunnel won’t collapse, but the actual digging? His hands are far more suited to delicate work, and his mind is too sharp for it to be wasted by spending time on such a monotonous, unstimulating task. “I’m going to need workers, Ecco, even more than those who are loyal to me. You can find a few dozen for me, can’t you?”

“Of course.” Her eyes scan the bathymetry map of the river and the course that the tunnel must take underneath it. It would be easier and faster if they could dig in a straight line, but between Jeremiah’s starting point and Wayne Manor there are a few spots in the river that are too deep to dig under or have an undetermined depth, and Jeremiah has had to work his path around them in order to ensure the tunnel’s lasting safety.

In several months Bruce will be traversing it, and Jeremiah will not cut corners to make an easier, quickly completed trail if it means risking Bruce’s wellbeing. 

What kind of friend would that make him?

“Is this what you’ve been working on so tirelessly lately?”

“Tireless work is the most gratifying.” It was a shame that Bruce wasn’t beside him, working with him, this time around. If Bruce were here right now… If he were looking over Jeremiah’s plans with him…

His eyes would spark in that curious way and his obvious interest in the project would, as always, be the greatest wordless compliment that Jeremiah had ever received. Just thinking about how Bruce might react to Jeremiah’s plan, to Jeremiah’s brilliance and creativity, was almost enough for something covetous and warm to consume him. It was a tragedy that Bruce would have to wait so long for this…

Though it will make for an unforgettable surprise, one that Jeremiah is sure that he’ll like.

Jeremiah does wonder, however, if he can last much longer without seeing Bruce’s face or hearing his voice. The flow of information that he’s ordered to have gathered on Bruce is a meager compensation for the lack of his presence at Jeremiah’s side. Jeremiah has felt his absence like an open wound ever since they’d parted on the night that Gotham was cut off from the world. 

“The reward will be well-worth the effort,” he says to himself before raising his voice. “Bruce and I… After it all comes together I can finally be certain that I will forever be in the forefront of his mind.”

The first thing he thought about when he woke up in the morning, the person who he thought about when he closed his eyes at night.

In his waking moments. In his dreams. Everywhere. 

Jeremiah is going to become Bruce’s most important person. Just as Bruce had become his. Jeremiah cannot wait until it is time for this, his greatest plan yet, to go underway so that he can be close to Bruce again at long last.

And perhaps he shouldn’t.

Perhaps, once everything in his church is finally settled, he should venture out to see Bruce tearing through the Dark Zone on his endless quest of finding him. He imagines he’ll be quite the sight. He imagines that Bruce is already beginning to change, already starting to shift onto the path that will lead him towards his full potential. 

And he wants to see Bruce again. So badly. 

Even the idea of it makes him feel lighter, the crushing weight that he holds in his chest easing at the thought of laying eyes on him in the flesh again and not just seeing grainy photos of him in old newspapers and magazines.

Yes, he thinks to himself, it couldn’t possibly hurt to seek him out to watch from a distance.

And maybe leave a trace behind so that Bruce would know that Jeremiah was thinking about him just as much as he was thinking about Jeremiah. 

A token of affection, of sorts. 

A reminder of their bond.

He goes through the papers on his desk, pushing aside the bathymetric map, and the subway maps, and even his own notes and plans to pull out a map of Gotham which he affixes to the bare wall with push-pins.

“Ecco.” He holds the container of red pins out to her, and she takes them from him. “Would you map out where Bruce has been spotted out in the dark for me? I want to see if there are any patterns to his movements.”

She nods and gets to work.

And Jeremiah watches avidly as pin after pin is planted to denote Bruce’s whereabouts.

Jeremiah can’t wait to see him again. 

x-x-x

He’s not entirely surprised that when he steps into his office Oswald Cobblepot is lounging in the seat across from his own, as if his presence is an everyday occurrence. Oswald takes all the liberties that he can, he always has, so seeing him in the one space where Jim can go when he wants to be alone to breathe for a few minutes before he goes back and tries to keep hope alive is just another way for Oswald to show off the ever-growing power imbalance between them.

So he’s not surprised. Just tired.

Even more tired when Oswald opens his mouth.

“Jim,” he crows, “old friend, how are you doing?”

He silently makes his way around his desk and settles into the chair across from Oswald, his hands folding together in front of him. He doesn’t want to answer almost as much as he needs to vent to someone. He thinks of the radio upstairs, and the bullshit bureaucracy that’s going to end up costing lives, and the way excuse after excuse crackles in his ears every time he tells the faceless voices on the other end of the line that they’re going to eventually need help.

It’s been three weeks since Jeremiah Valeska’s bombs destroyed all roads out of Gotham.

It’s been three weeks since despair started to creep over all who’d been left behind, no matter how hard he tried to keep hope alive.

“Honestly?” Jim sighs and shuts his eyes. Oswald’s seen him at some of his lowest moments, so what’s one more in the grand scheme of things? “I’ve been better.” His eyes flit half-open. Oswald’s lips are pursed, like he’s not sure how to react to Jim’s unexpected truthfulness. Jim counts that as a win in his book; a small victory in the midst of this endless war.

A pyrrhic victory.

He sighs again.

“Can I ask you something?”

Oswald’s expression closes off. He used to be so much easier to read; now it’s only when he’s gloating or angry that Jim can get a feel for what’s going through his mind.

“I suppose, if you must,” Oswald concedes. 

“Do you ever regret coming back after I told you to never show your face in Gotham again?”

Oswald lets out a single sharp laugh. “Really, Jim? Do I look like I regret it?” He gestures to his smiling face. “I, unlike some, am flourishing.” He places his hands on the table and leans in, a falsely sympathetic look in his eyes. He’s changed so much in the years that Jim has known him, but then, so has everyone, and sometimes he can’t help but think that very few seem to have changed for the better. “Do you regret coming to Gotham?”

“No.” Because for all that he’s gone through, all that he’s done, something in this city calls out to him. It’s his home, now. No other city could ever replace it and he’ll do all that he can for it. To make it a better place. To make it safe. 

“And why is that, exactly? Your hero complex, perhaps?”

“Do you think that, all those years ago, I spared you at the docks so that I could be a hero?”

Oswald stills. His eyes go unfocussed, distant. Remembering old times? Contemplating whatever underhanded means he could use to get Jim Gordon out of his hair once and for all?

“No,” he answers after a long period of silence. “You did it because you’re a good man.”

It shouldn’t mean anything to him, but the admission… It thaws something frozen inside of him.

Sometimes it’s difficult to believe that he’s a good man, especially when he knows how much he’s hurt the people he cares for. 

He hasn’t seen Bruce around the precinct in weeks, not since he’d managed to track him down to inform him about the state the safehouse had been found in. He misses him. Misses him getting underfoot and going off on his own investigations and being his clever, special self. Misses that feeling of pride and the occasional knowing glances he’d share with Alfred whenever Bruce did something that was almost beyond belief. Misses being a part of his life.

He’s starting to believe that, maybe, he thinks of Bruce as something like a son after all.

Of course this realization would happen at the worst possible time, when it would hurt him the most. 

“You look tired Jim,” there’s an edge to Oswald’s voice, but it’s not as biting as it could be. Maybe Oswald is still sentimental about the time when they weren’t at such insurmountable odds with each other. 

We’re alone here, he wants to say, cut off from the world like none of us matter. There’s no end in sight, of course I’m tired.

He fights the urge to bury his face in his hands. 

“We matter. Gotham matters. Every life in this city is worth something.” He only speaks about the innocent to the voices on the radio, he knows that bringing up anyone else will only make the powers that be even less likely to help. 

But every person in Gotham matters.

He thinks of the man who was his friend, once, whose eyes would light up whenever Jim answered one of his riddles. He thinks of the woman he used to love, and the way she stood beside him through thick and thin. He thinks of the man in front of him and all the terrible, wonderful things that he’s done for the city that he calls home.

He thinks of the young man who refused to take his hand and chose to fall, only to have his plans thwarted by someone full of a breathtaking potential for goodness. The young man who had been alive, in secret, but could very well be dead now.

He’s sick of death. He doesn’t want to lose anyone else. He’s already lost so many.

They’re going to need to start making long-term plans, because the voices who feed him excuses day in and day out seemingly have no care for the amount of lives that may soon be lost, innocent or guilty.

“Oswald,” his voice is soft, weariness seeping out of him like a tangible aura, “if no help comes—” God it feels awful to even say it; the fear that he’s beginning to hold close to his heart. “—we’re going to have to start looking out for each other.”

“I always look out for my own, Jim. You can look out for yours.”

Jim can feel himself close off. It was stupid of him to even think that Oswald, who was making himself comfortable in city hall and thriving while the less fortunate in Gotham were left to suffer, would—

There’s a rapid knocking against glass, and Jim’s eyes break away from Oswald to see Harvey on the other side of the door. Jim waves him in and Harvey doesn’t even spare Oswald a glance, something that leaves Jim feeling on edge.

Had something happened? Had one of the gangs broken through a checkpoint?

“Someone’s here.”

“Yes,” Oswald hisses, “he is, in fact, aware of that.”

Harvey finally casts a glare in Oswald’s direction. “Excuse me. Someone important is what I meant. Is that distinction enough for you?”

Oswald snarls, but neither Jim nor Harvey pay him much attention. Harvey out of distaste, and Jim out of incredulity.

Beyond the glass of his office, casually making conversation with Lucius Fox and Alfred Pennyworth in the bullpen, is the same person who Jim hasn’t seen in weeks.

Bruce looks tired, as if he hasn’t been sleeping at night.

A familiar guilt rises up inside of him.

I’m sorry that I hurt you, that I didn’t trust you, Jim thinks. 

Bruce’s gaze drifts towards Jim’s office, and their eyes briefly meet. The teen turns away before Jim can so much as think to mouth ‘hello’ at him.

He feels even more weary, and Harvey’s questioning glances aren’t helping. He didn’t understand just how big of a misstep Jim had made by keeping Jerome’s survival a secret from Bruce. He probably thought that Bruce showing up after weeks of avoiding this place was some kind of sign that everything was finally behind them.

Jim wishes it were all that easy. 

“Oswald, please leave.” He doesn’t have the energy to deal with him anymore. 

Oswald gasps, as if offended, but before he can start making a fuss Harvey escorts him out of the office to where two thugs, likely meant to be bodyguards, are waiting.

Jim watches Bruce shake Lucius’s hand, and smile at Alfred, and then turn to leave. He takes several steps before he pauses and turns back to look at Jim’s office, and though his expression isn’t as guarded as when they had been alone together on the roof of the precinct there’s still something distant in his eyes. He looks as though he’s weighing his options, as if deciding whether or not to bite the bullet and incite a conversation.

Jim holds his breath.

Bruce eventually raises his hand in a brief wave goodbye before he turns away.

It’s such a small gesture. 

But relief floods through Jim all the same.

He has a lot to do, a lot to make up for, but he’ll get through this.

No matter how dark it may sometimes seem in Gotham, Jim is going to make sure that there is light. He’ll safeguard it as well as the fragile hope that’s left in this city and someday, when this is all behind them, he knows that others will keep it alive, will turn it into something even more brilliant.

It will be hard work to cast aside the frustration and discouragement that has been preying on him ever since he’d started speaking to the faceless voices on the radio, but he feels his resolve strengthening. 

He has work to do.


	8. Chapter 8

Bruce has grown up to be… Incredibly weird. Not in a bad way. Just very different from anyone else who Selina has met. 

But, then again, she’d thought he was weird ever since she caught sight of him holding himself under the water of his pool trying to hold his breath until he absolutely couldn’t take anymore. It shouldn’t be a surprise that all of the little oddities that made Bruce himself had only become more pronounced as the years passed by. It shouldn’t be surprising that the kid who’d wanted to run around the dangerous streets with her would grow up to want to run around the Dark Zone.

That doesn’t make her worry any less, though.

At least she’s not alone in her concern. Alfred makes a good companion in that respect. 

“He’s really going out there again, huh?”

“Bruce can be quite obstinate once he’s made his mind up about something, as you well know,” Alfred tells her, and he’s right, she knows exactly how stubborn Bruce can be. “He’s set on this, and I don’t think there’s a force on this earth that could sway him off of this course.”

“I wish—” Her voice cracks, and she hates it. “I wish I could go out there with him.”

It could be like old times. Like better times.

Alfred’s eyes soften.

“I know you do. And I know you’d do a great job of looking out for him.” He leans forward in his chair, and he takes one of her hands between both of his own. “We’ll do what we can for him from here.”

“It’s not enough.”

 _She’s_ not enough. Not anymore, not anymorenotanymore—

Alfred’s hands grip tightly around her, and it feels grounding. It feels like it can keep her mind from slipping further into the dark.

She’s been better, lately, more like her old self. But even though she knows there are people around who love and support her that doesn’t erase the things that she feels, or the thoughts that she has about herself. They’re easier to ignore when she’s not alone but—Bruce is running off into danger without her, without Alfred, without anyone to look out for him, and if he gets hurt out there she’s not sure how she’ll be able to stand it or the knowledge that she wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it even if she were there. 

“Selina.” Alfred’s voice is gentle in a way that, coming from almost anyone else, would make her instincts scream that it was falsified to conceal something. They’d had a rough start; two people on very different ends of a spectrum with Bruce somehow stuck in the middle trying to balance them out, but things between them had smoothed out over the years. Bruce and Alfred have become one half of her family, though they were predominantly at odds with the other half. “You’ve been a good friend to my boy, and your friendship means the world to him already. It is enough.”

Selina’s eyes sting. She grips back at Alfred’s hand.

“Do you really think so?”

Her voice sounds small to her own ears. She hasn’t sounded this helpless, hasn’t been this helpless, in years. Kids like her couldn’t afford to be vulnerable, not even for a second, or the city would swallow them up and leave nothing behind. 

Just another missing street kid who no one really cared about.

But there are people who care about her, nowadays. 

“I’ve known that boy for his entire life.” Alfred’s voice is firm, unyielding. “I know so.”

Selina buries her face into her pillow before Alfred can see that her eyes are doing more than glossing over, but she keeps a firm grip on his hand. 

“Thanks, Alfred,” she croaks, voice barely legible.

“I only ever speak the truth, Miss Kyle.” One of his hands lets go of hers, and it settles very gently on her upper back. “I thought you’d have had that figured out by now.”

She laughs into the pillow, and the stinging in her eyes lessens.

“Yeah, you were never one to pull punches with anyone.” Literal or metaphorical. 

“Right you are, miss,” Alfred says gently, “right you are.” 

x-x-x

This is the first time that Bruce has slipped into the Dark Zone with a specific direction in mind.

North, north, north.

Newtown and Otisburg, Amusement Mile and The Hill, he’s not going to stop searching until he’s found Jerome, and then he’s—

He’s not sure. Arkham wasn’t a great option even when it was a feasible possibility, and to throw Jerome into a holding cell in the GCPD seems like a terrible idea for multiple reasons. If a large enough force makes its mind up to break into the Green Zone the barricades won’t be enough to hold them out for long. And if there was any criminal out in the dark that people would rally together for…

Jerome, as terrible as he is, has always managed to draw followers. Even in Arkham, when they’d had their conversation through the fencing, there had been signs that he was gaining the loyalty of those who he was locked up with.

And even on the offhand chance that they managed to keep his capture a secret, who’s to say that Jerome wouldn’t be able to turn people in the Green Zone to his side?

And who’s to say that he wouldn’t end up getting shot by someone trying to deal out justice?

The idea of it, that Jerome’s life and wickedly chaotic nature would be cut short by some nameless person who thought that they could get revenge on evil by committing murder, is enough to make him feel uneasy.

Bruce can’t let that happen. He’ll figure something out.

He has to. 

Amusement Mile is one of the most northern parts of Gotham and Bruce considers travelling to the point and working his way down from there, but it almost seems too obvious. Surely, if Jerome were hiding out anywhere, it would be at a location more surprising than an abandoned theme park. The only place more painstakingly obvious, and thus more painfully unlikely, than Amusement Mile would be the Gotham Carnival of Dreams.

That place has so much history. The lights. The screams. 

The maze of mirrors. 

But despite how much of a conspicuous place that may be Bruce can’t seem to shake the feeling that he should go there first; the place that Jerome had turned into his own wicked playground not so very long ago. 

It’s where everything between them became that much more personal, really. 

It’s where whatever ties that bind them truly took root. Jerome had wanted to kill him, and he had wanted to kill Jerome. During that night they had drawn each other’s blood and through their actions some strange, egregious connection was forged. The thought of stepping into that place is almost enough to leave him short of breath, but he’ll have to search it sooner or later.

He may as well get it over with.

The trek to the north of the city takes time. He’d learned to be more concerned about his own safety after his encounter with the bat monster and if he really is to go deeper into the Dark Zone than he has ever gone before then he has to be much, much more careful. He can’t allow himself to run headfirst into danger in his desperation to find Jerome and—and do whatever it was to him that Bruce had yet to figure out.

Put him under house-arrest, maybe. Maybe strongly suggest that Jerome could alleviate his ensuing boredom by helping Bruce track down Jeremiah.

Bruce pauses in the midst of doubling back, just in case he wasn’t as alone out here as his senses were telling him, and he finds himself wondering if such a thing could be possible. 

Jerome had found Jeremiah before. Perhaps he could do it again. 

But his likelihood of doing such a thing willingly while in custody was slim to none. He would be far more likely to lead everyone involved on a wild goose chase, maybe even going so far as to purposefully steer them further away from Jeremiah just to watch them run.

He tries to shake the idea off, but fragments of it cling to him stubbornly. He’ll just have to live with the fact that he won’t entirely be able to disregard it no matter how terrible of a plan it would be in practice. Bruce continues on, cautious about every noise that stems from around him, and doubly cautious about the sounds that he himself is making. 

And in less time than he would have expected he finds himself standing at the entrance to the Carnival of Dreams. 

The forgotten booths and out-of-order rides are menacing in the dark, with the clouds too heavy to let through anything but the slightest hint of moonlight, but Bruce moves forward intently. If nothing else comes of his stop here at least he can cross it off of his list of where either Valeska might be. The carnival has fallen into disrepair since Jerome’s special night, because who, except for his Maniax, would want to spend their leisure time in a place that had once housed so much wickedness?

Bruce creeps past the merry-go-round, and the dunk tank where Jerome had once pressed staples into the flesh of his arm, and the ring where Jerome had once had him handcuff to a pole with a canon full of knives and nails and other sharpened shrapnel pointed in his direction.

And then he enters the maze of mirrors. 

Most of the mirrors are broken, now, and the shattered remains crunch under his shoes as he steps further inside, but he traces his old path and ignores the spray-painted narrow eyes with ‘hahaha’s in place of wide, smiling mouths that seem to have been tagged around every new corner. 

Even the place where he had once had Jerome pinned has not been left untouched, not that Bruce expected it to be. He stands in the centre of the room which provided the terrible realization, that he, too, was capable of all the terrible things that the Maniax were. That he was capable of the terrible things that Jerome was. A darkness stirred inside of him, had fought against his control and had almost won, and Bruce would never be able to forget it; what it felt like to have that mirror shard in his hand and raise it above his head with the intent to kill.

To have Jerome goading him into it. 

His hands clench into fists and, all of a sudden—

He breaks out into goosebumps.

Bruce whirls around, almost certain that he’ll find someone standing right behind him.

There’s no one there.

But that doesn’t mean that he’s not being watched. Someone could very well be staring at him via the jagged reflection of a reflection, and it’s not Jerome’s style to be so subtle. He strains his ears for any signs of life; breath, shuffles of fabric, the crunch of broken glass, but there’s nothing.

“Hello?”

He takes a few steps deeper into the maze and—maybe it’s the incredibly personal and uncomfortable history that he has with this place, or maybe it’s his intuition screaming at him that it’s a bad idea to go further—his heart begins to race.

Perhaps Jerome’s comment about Jeremiah having a pair of eyes watching him from somewhere has made him somewhat paranoid, but Bruce has been learning to trust his instincts, and there’s an urgent feeling in his chest that tells him he needs to leave. Right now.

He backtracks quickly, ears still straining for any sound that would indicate that someone else was in the maze of mirrors with him, but again there is nothing.

When he steps outside the overcast sky has cleared up enough that the moonlight makes the carnival seem less ominously shadowed, but that does little to ease his apprehension. He runs from the maze, past the attractions, and hopes that whatever, whoever, he might have felt watching him won’t follow.

He is really not in the mood to bleed all over himself again, for one thing.

He leaves the carnival behind him, but still feels shaken for a few city blocks. So much so that he almost misses out on the sound of footsteps ahead, and barely has time to duck into shadows before a pair of people come around the corner. They’re dressed up like—like Scarecrow.

Like Jonathan Crane.

Bruce watches them pass from the tight spot that he concealed himself in, and once enough distance has come between them that he can follow without immediately being noticed he trails after them. They both, oddly enough, have large stencils and canisters of spray paint in their hands, and they seem to be going through the motion of walking a couple of blocks, placing the stencil onto a side of a building, and quickly painting over the negative space. Bruce continues to trek after them waiting for something a little more villainous, but… That’s it.

He considers sneaking up on them and asking directly if they’d seen Jerome lately, because if he’d been hanging out around this area, presumably in the company of Jonathan Crane, then surely the people who were dressed up in burlap would know something about it. 

Then a low, soft sound echoes off of the walls of the buildings around them, causing Scarecrow’s followers to freeze and Bruce’s heart to jump.

He knows, he knows, _he knows_ that sound.

He looks up.

And sees a familiar figure with a flash of red hair, standing on the edge of a building just like on the day that Jerome fell. His body isn’t turned towards Bruce, he seems to be keeping an eye on the other two out on the street, and Bruce takes the opportunity to creep further into the shadows, silent, unnoticed, and slip inside the building whose roof Jerome is currently occupying. 

He ascends quickly, mind racing. He’d expected it would take more time to find him. He’d expected he would be better hidden. He’d expected that, if anything, he would have to find where Scarecrow has set up his base of operations and approach him for answers about Jerome’s whereabouts.

But here he is. Three floors away.

Two floors.

One.

Bruce slams open the door to the roof and rushes forward without pause as Jerome twists at the noise. There is, at first, a deep frown on his face, but as soon as he lays eyes on who it is that’s with him his expression twists into something jovial. 

“Bruce!” He holds his arms out wide, as if in welcome. Something about seeing him on the edge of the roof, his back to a void space, makes Bruce break out into goosebumps again.

Bruce grabs one of his hands and yanks him down from the edge. Once Jerome is in the process of stumbling down the _right way_ he tackles him to the roof.

Jerome laughs; not a surprise, and then he knees Bruce in the stomach.

The air rushes out from between his clenched teeth, and he roughly fists both of his hands in Jerome’s jacket, firmly pressing him down.

“Stay. Down.”

Jerome’s eyes glint, and he slowly licks his lips. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll make you.”

Jerome laughs again, and he seems distracted enough by his own amusement that Bruce can freely grab one of the things he had brought along with him on his excursion, just in case.

Jerome had walked away easily last time. He won’t be able to, this time.

The sound of a metal click and the feeling of something encircling his wrist makes Jerome’s laughter abruptly cut off. Bruce lifts the other end of the handcuffs towards his own wrist—because Jerome can’t escape him if they’re literally attached together—but Jerome flails his arm forcefully away before Bruce can get the cuff on.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think? Stay still.”

Jerome flails again, and Bruce has to let go of the cuff to keep himself upright.

“You want—you want to handcuff us together? Oh, Bruce, darlin’,” he drawls in a salacious way, clearly too amused by the situation. Bruce presses a hand against his mouth to stop whatever else he wants to say, and Jerome’s eyes crinkle at the corners as his smile widens.

“You’re coming with me, Jerome.”

Jerome laughs wildly against his palm. Bruce reaches up, trying to grab onto Jerome’s cuffed wrist, but Jerome twists his weight and turns, and Bruce finds himself abruptly tipping to the side, then forcefully held down on his back.

Jerome’s hands slide around both of his wrists, and he rests his weight on Bruce’s stomach as he pins Bruce’s hands on either side of his head.

“You should have just tried to knock me out instead of giving me this adorable little friendship bracelet,” Jerome tells him with a soft laugh. “But I will admit that you surprised me. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon. You must have missed me, Bruce.”

“Like a migraine.” 

Jerome chortles, and his knees clamp a little harder around Bruce’s sides while his fingers tighten.

Bruce wonders if he’ll have bruises around his wrists at the end of this.

Bruce wonders if he’ll manage to get through this with only bruises to signify this altercation.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may be short but it makes up for it with _!!!_ (you'll see)
> 
> I'm prepping to go on vacation, so it'll be a few weeks until this updates again. Enjoy!
> 
> xoxo

A night of messing with a few of Scarecrow’s followers, who were no doubt confused about their current task though willing enough to go along with it, has transformed into something even better.

Bruce’s hand gripping his own, pulling him down from perceived danger. It had struck Jerome as bewilderingly considerate—which was, admittedly, exactly Bruce’s style—even when Bruce had afterwards tackled him to the roof and attempted to immobilize him. The endeavored stunt with the handcuffs, ha, well, that was an unexpected, fun little strategy. Had Bruce thought that he’d be able to forcibly drag Jerome to the Green Zone, even though Jerome was taller and broader and stronger than he was? Sure, Bruce had tricks up his sleeve, and could think on his feet, and had an agile manner of movement, but he was also too tenacious for his own good.

Because all of his persistence has led him here; underneath Jerome.

It’s like a fun little inversion of their time in the maze of mirrors. 

Except Bruce had wanted to kill him back then, even if only for a minute or less. And Jerome has absolutely no plans on killing Bruce, now or ever.

It is so much. More. Fun. To watch him react. To see what he’ll do. To catch sight of the shadows dancing behind his eyes.

Jerome leans in closer, watching as a placid mask drops over Bruce’s face. He can feel the fluttering pulse in Bruce’s wrists so he knows how false his indifference is and right now, this near to him, Jerome feels—

A spark of something beautiful. 

A flash of something that, maybe, isn’t entirely unfamiliar.

Bruce pinning him down with his hand clenched around the mirror shard, Bruce intervening when the situation with his uncle had taken an unexpected turn, Bruce holding on to his hand so very tightly—Jerome has felt traces of this zealous interest before.

“Have you been looking for me ever since our little truce?”

Bruce’s face somehow goes even more blank, and Jerome feels his lips stretch wider.

“You really did miss me,” he croons. Something wildly vivid lights up in Bruce’s eyes and he starts to struggle, but Jerome clamps down around him harder. “No need to deny it, Bruce, I’ll admit that I missed you too. Does that make you feel better?”

“Not particularly.” 

Out of the corner of his eye there’s a small flash.

Like that of a camera.

Jerome doesn’t turn towards the source of the brief light, but he does find it difficult not to react to it.

Hadn’t he told Bruce that Jeremiah would have eyes on him?

Hadn’t he told Bruce that seeing them, together, would make someone slip up?

Somewhere nearby, close enough that they thought they could get a clear photograph, is one of Jeremiah’s followers.

Because who else would want photographic proof of this?

“Bruce,” he leans even further into the teenager’s space, and feels oddly gratified when Bruce goes completely still, his eyes opening just a touch wider at the recognizable intimacy of the moment. Jerome detects another flash, but with his attention so firmly focused elsewhere it’s easy to ignore it the second time. 

Jerome has wanted to do a lot of things to Bruce over the years. Slit his pretty throat, kill his butler, watch him be eaten alive by beetles, bring out his spectacular darkness.

Wanting to kiss him is new.

But not entirely surprising.

Was there any other do-gooder on this planet who was even half as interesting as Bruce?

No.

Was there any other person on this planet who had thrown themselves stalwartly into danger—or had even just gone out of their way, facing no danger in doing so—in order to help Jerome?

No.

Bruce Wayne is a spectacular singularity. 

He leans down to whisper in Bruce’s ear, his lips skimming against the lobe as he speaks.

“Bruce,” he coos, menacingly soft, gently dangerous, “smile darlin’, we’re on camera.”

And before Bruce has the chance to start asking questions Jerome forces him into silence by sliding their lips together.

He never was one for denying himself. Plus it would give their hidden photographer another thing to freak out about, and the more worked up they are the easier they’ll be to track. 

The kiss is laughably chaste, really, but Bruce freezes up underneath him and his eyes stay wide open for the entire, though brief, time. When Jerome pulls back he chuckles at the blatant astonishment and the rapidly flushing cheeks of his absolute favourite person. He lets go of Bruce’s wrists to fist his hands into his coat and raises his shoulders up off the ground. 

“Chase me,” he demands.

Then he slams him back down hard enough to leave him dazed, because Jerome knows he’ll need at least a small head start to keep from being caught right away.

He lifts himself up and starts running, sure that Bruce will follow. 

Eventually.

Even if Bruce doesn’t catch up with him soon, even if they don’t track down Jeremiah’s hidey-hole together, Bruce will give chase.

A predator on the hunt.

Another mad laugh bubbles forth from his lips as he makes his way to where the flash had originated from.

“Ready or not, Miah, here I come.”

His brother, his legacy, his creation…

Has some explaining to do.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello yes I am back and all that I have to say about this chapter is, on multiple levels: Goddamn _FINALLY_.

This morning they had broken ground. 

In an old offshoot of a subway tunnel located at the perfect depth to start digging Jeremiah had watched the first pickaxe hit against the concrete and steadily break through the man-made materials to reveal the earth underneath. He had felt elated. The project would take time, of course, but to see it started, to know what was waiting for him at the end of the path he had mapped out, well…

It was enough to make a man want to celebrate.

He’d left the underground for his church in the afternoon after ensuring that the mouth and first several feet of the tunnel were properly supported, since it wouldn’t do to have a cave in so soon after starting and the workers that Ecco had so faithfully attained for him would be toiling away throughout the entire day and into the night. Come tomorrow morning he’d check their progress, ensure the next stretch of the tunnel was reinforced, and make certain that they were making good time.

He had a tight schedule to stick to, and anyone who wasn’t doing their share of work would find themselves quickly replaced, as well as made an example of. 

He slips inside the back door of the building that has housed himself and Ecco for the past several weeks and he makes his way upwards to where his personal effects are guarded by lock and key, lest any of his more zealous followers actually attempt to make contact with him. It is there that he pours himself a congratulatory drink though sipping at it, alone, is not as enjoyable as it had once been.

He misses Bruce.

He wishes Bruce were here.

But now that the tunnel is finally being worked on Jeremiah can start focussing on his next order of business. Keeping his own eye out for Bruce as he runs around in the dark and leaving something for him to find. A token, or a message, or perhaps the broken body of one of the first men that Bruce had sent with the news that he was looking for Jeremiah.

Jeremiah could pin a note to the outside of their jacket, telling Bruce, ‘come find me.’

He thinks Bruce might look for him even harder after that, after knowing that Jeremiah must be aware that Bruce was looking so tirelessly for him. The thought of having Bruce’s attention focussed so firmly on him is pleasing.

He laughs softly against his glass as he tips the last drops of liquor into his mouth.

But first, where would Bruce go next? From what Jeremiah had seen he tended to circle around the Green Zone, venturing a little further from safety with each trip, but at times his movements could be sporadic, as if he’d gotten distracted from his set task.

He recalls that as Ecco was pushing in some of the pins that signified the sightings she had mentioned that his followers had spoken of Bruce disarming gang members who’d been getting close to a check-point one night. She also mentioned another night where he led a few people who’d been trapped outside the barricade into the Green Zone. 

Bruce was still going out of his way to assist people who could never deserve his kindness. Jeremiah isn’t surprised, but he does wish that Bruce would finally come to the realization that the people who he surrounded himself with were simply not worthy of his attention. They would take, and take, and take all that they could from him without ever pausing to think of what they could do in return. They would covetously reach for and steal all that that Bruce’s too-big heart would let them, all while masquerading as trustworthy companions. A cluster of false friends who Jeremiah would gladly put a bullet into.

Bruce deserved more than their shallow imitations of camaraderie. He deserved a true friend, a _best friend_ , someone who would look out for him, and care for him, and would return his friendship tenfold. Someone who wanted him to reach his full potential even if it meant breaking him down, picking up the pieces, and putting him back together in a way that he was not, before. 

Someone who would faithfully stand beside him during the worst day of his life. 

He deserved Jeremiah. Just as much as Jeremiah deserved him.

They belonged together. It was simply what was meant to be.

His thoughts of Bruce make him feel restless, and after a time he heads to his office so that he can look at the map of Gotham with the red pins, as well as what Jeremiah had added around the edges after. There are magazine and newspaper cut outs of Bruce, every picture of him that he could find, because Jeremiah hadn’t been able to resist putting something up to remind him of what he was working for.

Jeremiah opens the door to his office and steps inside, closing it shut behind him.

Then his eyes catch sight of something that cannot be possible.

And he finds himself coming to an abrupt halt. 

A familiar figure is standing in his office, staring at the map of Bruce sightings that Ecco had marked off. 

“Your inspiration board is nice,” Jerome tells him casually, his eyes not straying from the map and photos. “Very ex-boyfriend turned stalker.”

Jeremiah takes his gun from its holster, but Jerome’s own weapon is trained on him by the time he takes aim. Something metallic clinks together at his movement, and Jeremiah’s eyes are briefly drawn to the handcuffs dangling from Jerome’s wrist.

“Hi, baby bro,” Jerome turns to look at him fully, gaze tracking up and down, cold and assessing before something awful and humorous sparks in his eyes. “Wow, I sure did a number on you, huh? Looks like I might still be handsome one after all,” he laughs, and it’s incredibly grating.

Jeremiah should demand to know what’s going on, or he should start shooting and not bother with questions. He’d seen Jerome’s body after the fall, he’d seen his grave, he’d kicked his corpse back into the empty plot. Jeremiah had felt the one last connection he had to his family sever and die, leaving behind a void that had only been filled by Bruce; the brother that he should have had all along.

Jerome’s presence here is an abomination, and his nonchalant attitude is irritating, and Jeremiah will not tolerate it. 

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Really?” Jerome purses his lips into a mock-frown. “Do you think that you can? Because honestly, I’m not sure if I’m able to die. It never seems to take, and I always end up waking up again.”

Third time’s the charm, Jeremiah thinks, and he feels his finger twitch on the trigger.

“Just a heads up,” Jerome cuts in before Jeremiah gives in to what his instincts are screaming at him to do, “in case you’re planning on trying to slit his throat any time soon.” His head briefly tilts in the direction of Bruce’s photos and the map, and Jeremiah feels himself snarl at the very suggestion that he would hurt his best friend in such a way. “He’s harder to kill than you’d think.”

“Your lack of success was because you were— _are_ —incompetent. Too insane to carry out your plans properly.”

That’s where we’re different, Jeremiah thinks proudly. 

Jerome laughs again.

“No, I’m good at killing. Bruce is good at surviving. He always finds a way of exceeding my expectations.” Something in his expression shifts, and his tone is so overly familiar that it makes Jeremiah grit his teeth. “What are you good at, Miah?”

“Everything that you are not,” he replies waspishly. “I changed this city in a way that you never could. And if you’re planning on slitting Bruce’s throat I’ll make sure you die screaming, and if you wake up afterwards you’ll be screaming then, too.”

“Oh?” Jerome seems to perk up at the warning, as if he’s pleased by the threat. “That’s almost delightfully vicious, I’m so proud,” he croons. “But I’ve got no plans for that.”

“You’ll understand that I find that difficult to believe. I’ve read your diary from front to back Jerome. You listed dozens of ways to kill him. You wanted to slather him in honey and have him eaten alive by beetles.”

“Plans and intentions change. If I managed to slather him in honey nowadays, well, it’s certainly not going to be beetles that lick it off of his skin.”

Jeremiah fumbles for a moment, cheeks going a bit hot. 

What?

“But let’s not focus on that, or else I’ll get distracted,” all of the good humour wipes off of Jerome’s face. His expression is void of any emotion, blank in a way that Jeremiah remembers from when they were children.

It was when his expression had gone flat that he was the scariest. Those were the times when Jeremiah was the most compelled to stretch the truth. Maybe Jerome hadn’t hurt him or anyone else, but he knew that Jerome was thinking about it when light behind his eyes suddenly went dim.

But Jeremiah doesn’t fear Jerome, not anymore.

“An entire month,” Jerome begins without inflection, “and all you’ve done after cutting Gotham off from the rest of the world is build yourself a church with a truly pathetic number of followers? I’m not mad, just disappointed.”

That’s not all, Jeremiah wants to spit out. He’s tracked Bruce movements, and has kept watch of the new contenders in Gotham, and has plotted and planned and designed—Jerome was underestimating him. That, too, is incredibly irritating, although Jeremiah is rational enough to realize that it might be for the best. Jerome wasn’t taking him seriously, and in the end that would be his downfall. 

“When it comes to followers I choose quality over quantity,” Jeremiah retorts snidely, “something that you wouldn’t understand.”

Jerome snorts, amusement slips back onto his face and Jeremiah isn’t sure what was worse: the lack of expression or the humor. “Maybe you’re right, I was never one for vetoing those who were so quick to follow me. But you know, if you’d gone for quantity then maybe you would have had enough people to put an end to this.”

“To you bothering me? I can end that myself.”

“No.” Jerome’s grin turns wide, uncanny. “To the little fire that I started on the first floor. It takes almost nothing to set one up in a place like this; so many candles, so many old hymn books to use as tinder, almost no one around to make sure the flames were kept away from flammable materials. The wicks must have burnt down and caught by now. It’s too bad that there are no fire extinguishers.” His clucks his tongue. “Pretty sure that’s against code, by the way.”

Jeremiah feels himself go tense, though he doesn’t let it show on his face. 

“You’re lying,” is what he says, but really, Jerome is exactly the sort of person who’s deranged enough to burn down a place of worship. 

“Am I?” Jerome gaze turns cold and assessing again. “Well Mister he-lit-my-bed-on-fire, how about you open the door behind you and find out.”

Jeremiah reaches one hand behind him, searching for the door handle. He opens it forcefully.

The scent of smoke is faint, but it’s there.

Ecco, he thinks, wondering where she was, if she was on the first floor, if she was trapped—

And Jerome takes advantage of the second that his guard is down, sprinting forward to tackle Jeremiah to the floor, knocking the gun right out of his hand and pinning his wrists to his chest before Jeremiah has a chance to grab one of his blades to retaliate.

“You should have been doing so much more to drive this city crazy. I left that trap so that you would be my legacy,” Jerome tells him, as if Jeremiah was meant to be a slave to his whims from beyond the grave. Jeremiah scowls at his impudence. Already, he has done so much that Jerome had been unable to do. Jerome had brought darkness into the city for one night, Jeremiah’s darkness has gone on for a month.

Besides, Gotham in and of itself was not his main goal, and his carefully concocted plan was going to finally do that which Jerome could never even hope to accomplish. 

The reminder of his wonderful plan, his marvelous gift: the opportunity to re-write a memory and attain true self-actualization, soothes his anger enough that he’s able to speak calmly.

“It was running through your gauntlet of fire that changed me, Jerome. Life or death situations can do that, or so I’ve heard,” he tells him honestly, and Jerome falters. He’s able to knee Jerome in the stomach and its satisfying to hear the air rush out of his brother’s lungs, even though Jerome’s grip on his wrists becomes painfully tight in retaliation. “It wasn’t the gas. Other than a few mild cosmetic effects it was as if I’d been misted with water. You did have a hand in making me who I was supposed to be—though not in the way you think—but I don’t owe you anything for it.” His fists clench and he lifts his shoulders off of the ground to glower at his twin. “I did not reach my full potential in order to become more like _you_ , and I refuse to carry on as you would.”

Jerome narrows his eyes at him, and Jeremiah feels proud of the way he’d subverted Jerome’s plan without even meaning to. 

He’d obviously expected that Jeremiah would end up some mad pawn of a deranged game. He’d expected that Jeremiah’s free will would be forfeit. He’d expected Jeremiah’s ambitions would only follow the same unhinged path that Jerome’s had and that he wouldn’t think of new, better ways to spend his time. 

Another failure for Jerome. Another success for him. 

“Besides, not everything is about Gotham,” he drawls.

“Oh?”

“Some things.” Most things, if Jeremiah were being honest. “Are about Bruce Wayne.”

Jerome stills, and something in his eyes glimmers in a way that Jeremiah finds distantly familiar.

Was that what he looked like when he thought about the potential in Bruce?

“I’ve gotta say, you’re not wrong,” Jerome admits, and Jeremiah glares up at him. Of course he isn’t wrong. Changing Gotham for the better meant nothing if Bruce was not also changed for the better. Gotham was meant to become Bruce’s Dark Island and altering it would be a pointless undertaking without _Bruce_. “I was hoping the city would take priority, but I can understand your fixation.”

“I don’t need your understanding, nor do I want it. In time Bruce will see all that I have done for him, and he will become all that he is meant to be.”

And nothing else will matter.

“Ha.” Jerome looks genuinely amused, and it rankles. “So maybe you’re not as much of a disappointment as you could be, but your hiding away hasn’t done much of anything to Bruce.” Jerome slips something into Jeremiah’s jacket pocket. “Though maybe I should thank you for that. If you hadn’t gone into hiding Bruce wouldn’t have gone searching for you, and I wouldn’t have found him, and we—” He breaks off into another peal of laughter. “Well, things would be different.”

“Found him? What do you mean, found him?” Had Bruce, on his quest to find Jeremiah, actually crossed paths with Jerome?

Another instance where they spent time together that Jeremiah hadn’t been aware of?

He cannot stand it. 

“Do you really need me to spell it out for you, broski? You started playing the long game, plotting something that you need time to carry out, and I can respect that, really. But in doing so you left Brucie all alone, didn’t you? How cold.” Jerome taps his fingers over whatever he’d placed in Jeremiah’s pocket. “He’ll get over you, though.”

Jeremiah snarls up at him, ready to use his teeth to draw blood in place of his more civilized weapons. Jerome shifts back swiftly, out of range, and something oddly, infuriatingly proud settles over his features; as if Jeremiah trying to snap his teeth at him has eased some of his enraging _disappointment_.

“It’ll be interesting to see what sort of crazy scheme you’ve got planned,” Jerome tells him, and if Jeremiah were a less refined individual he’d spit right in his face. “I hope it ends up worth the weeks of waiting.”

“My plan is not crazy—” he starts, but cuts himself off as he hears a faint yell of:

“Boss?”

The smell of smoke is getting stronger now, too.

“Like the idea of a hench-wench, by the way,” Jerome says lowly. “Didn’t get the opportunity to tell you that last time. She’s a spitfire.” 

“I wouldn’t get too close. Perhaps you don’t recall what she’s capable of, but I wouldn’t even need to intervene on her behalf if you laid your hands on her.”

“Don’t I know it. But no, I have my sights set on someone else.” Jerome lightly taps a hand against his cheek, it feels almost companionable—like a time so long ago that Jeremiah is surprised that he hasn’t forgotten about it completely—and then he punches him across the jaw, scrambling upwards and away as he calls out behind him, “I’ll catch up with you later. Be bad!”

Jeremiah twists onto his knees and scrambles for his gun. He shoots several times in quick succession, but instead of cries of pain all that greets his ears is the sound of Jerome’s fading, hysterical laughter.

He won’t be caught off guard, next time.

Jeremiah quickly takes stock of his office and grabs onto the essentials. He distantly notes that the maps and blueprints on his desk appear untouched, as if Jerome hadn’t bothered with them. As if he’d come in and instead of figuring out Jeremiah’s plans he’d instead stared at the map of Gotham and the surrounding pictures of Bruce. 

“Boss!?”

“Coming, Ecco!” 

There will be other maps of Gotham that he can mark with sightings of Bruce. There will be other pictures of Bruce.

Yet he’s still regretful that he doesn’t have the time to carefully take each one down and bring them with him.

He makes his way down the stairs and Ecco meets him at the bottom, her eyes wide and wild.

“We can’t go out the main doors boss, hurry.”

They run out of the building together. Thankfully Jeremiah’s office was towards the back, because Jerome’s fire must have started in the front with how high the fire is burning. The entire sanctuary is engulfed, and it’s spreading fast. 

“Who did this,” Ecco grits, hands curled into tight fists at her sides. She’s practically shaking with anger. “I’ll kill them myself, boss, I swear I will.”

“It was Jerome.”

Ecco goes still, likely just as surprised as he’d been.

No reasonable person would ever expect to be the target of a vengeful ghost who came back from the dead, especially when they’d seen the lifeless corpse themselves. And how did that happen, Jeremiah wonders, how did a ruse like that come about? It matters little, in the face of current events, though it is vexing all the same. Still, he knows the truth now.

Next time Jerome isn’t going to have the element of surprise on his side. Next time Jeremiah’s shots won’t miss. 

And speaking of gunshots…

“Your 38 Caliber Test of Faith was a lovely idea Ecco,” Jeremiah tells her placidly as he watches the blaze. Most of his followers and workers were untouched by the flames, safe in the beginnings of the subterranean tunnel, and his church is secondary to his plans. He can find a new building to convert into his own space, but now that Jerome is running around he’ll need to ensure that his tunnel is the best kept secret in the Dark Zone. “But given the current circumstances we can’t afford to be quite as fastidious about how far my prospective followers are willing to go for me. Besides, I know your loyalty. You have proven yourself to me for years, there is no need for you to set such a high example when your devotion is so obvious.”

“It would have been a thing of beauty, boss,” Ecco says, standing tall beside him. “I wanted only to best to follow you, only the most loyal.”

“I know. You have been my steadfast confidante Ecco, and I believe that with you as a guiding example those who have pledged to follow me will become just as faithful as you have been.”

He slips his hand into his pocket, curious and wary as to what Jerome might have felt the urge to give him, and pulls out a pair of polaroids.

It’s dark in both of the photos, and the first thing Jeremiah’s eyes are able to perceive is the flash of orange representing Jerome’s hair. Then he takes the rest of the picture in and he can feel something inside of him snap.

Even distant and in low light he knows the curves and edges of Bruce’s face. And there Jerome is, right. Over. Top. Of _him_. Looming like a vulture, or some other scavenging beast, intruding on Bruce’s space like he had plans to devour him.

‘If I managed to slather him in honey nowadays—’

Jeremiah crushes the photos in his fist, something angry and possessive burning inside of him.

His reaction isn’t only because Jerome doesn’t deserve to be alive, let alone take any of Bruce’s time or attention. Jeremiah has held Bruce in his arms, and knows how it feels to have him close, and he misses Bruce so very much. He’s missed him from the minute he’d snuck away after Ra’s had collapsed into a pile of ash.

Misses him. Wants him back. Wants him to stay. Wants, wants, wants—

Wants more than he ever wanted a brother or a best friend. Wants more than he’s ever wanted anyone. 

Jeremiah closes his eyes and thinks of the way Bruce would look at him with wonder and his heart does a familiar flicker in his chest, and he feels warm, and he—

He’s been a fool to think that the intensity of his feelings towards Bruce only signified friendship and brotherly affection. 

But, in his own defense, Jeremiah had never been in love before.

Love, love, love.

He looks at the smouldering remains of his church and although this is certainly a step back in other, more important ways this day has been like taking five steps forward.

“Ecco, I believe that I have just realized something monumental.”

“What is it, boss?”

He takes a deep breath.

“I’m in love with Bruce Wayne.”

Saying it out loud only solidifies it as the truth.

He’s in love with Bruce. He’s been in love for months. 

She’s silent for a long moment, and then her hand comes to rest on his shoulder in a companionable way, their years of familiarity shining through in the gesture. 

“I’m happy for you Jeremiah,” she tells him frankly.

He’s happy, too.

He allows his eyes to rove over his ruined church one last time before his resolve to go on strengthens.

If Jerome thought that this would be enough to cripple him, he had a rude awakening ahead. 

“Come along Ecco, we have things to do.”

And people to see.

Or, at least, Jeremiah had one person to see.

Ideas about simply watching him and leaving a trace of himself behind for Bruce to find don’t seem like enough anymore. It wasn’t fair that Jerome had seen Bruce, spoken to Bruce, _touched_ Bruce while Jeremiah was busy laying the groundwork for his greatest project to date. It was undeserved and unwarranted. Jerome should be dead, and Jeremiah shouldn’t have to feel jealous that his deranged twin had forced himself back onto Bruce’s radar in order to undermine Jeremiah’s importance, and Jeremiah needs to put everything to rights immediately. 

He’ll still need to keep his current project under wraps, of course—such a lovely surprise could not be ruined—but he’d kept the secret of the generators easily enough while working side by side with Bruce, and this will be no different. 

It is going to be so very nice to see Bruce again, speak to him again, _hold_ him again.

Jeremiah can’t wait.


	11. Chapter 11

Bruce had lost track of Jerome a little after dawn, too rightfully cautious to go rushing through blocks of the city that were covered in both scorch marks and slowly melting stretches of thick ice. 

It was at times like these, when he stood back to think about what might happen to him if he were unlucky enough to sprint into the middle of a fight between a pair that were formidable enough on their own, that he wondered why so much madness seemed to stem from his city.

It also made him wonder if he weren’t a little in over his head. 

He’s strong, and smart, and fast, but he needs to be stronger and smarter and faster if he wants to have a positive impact. 

He needs to be prepared. For anything. Especially since Jerome and Jeremiah are both wild cards. The time he’d spent getting close to Jeremiah before the cruel charade came to an end, the confrontations he’s had with Jerome over the years, Bruce isn’t going to fool himself into thinking that those had left him with better insight compared to others as to what the twins might be getting up to. He couldn’t predict them, or their actions, or the thoughts and aspirations that drove them to do what they did. 

Bruce purses his lips together tightly at the memory of what had happened early in the morning. He’d been caught off guard, too shocked about Jerome’s actions to put a stop to it, and Jerome had been able to slip free far too easily.

He can still feel traces of the kiss against his mouth; Jerome’s too-wide smile and rough scars and chapped lips, and his cheeks burn at the lingering sensation.

He’s sick of people trying to get under his skin and into his head. Lying to him and using him and laughing at him. There’s a trick to the ploy Jerome used to assist with his disappearing act, some sort of catch. He’d said something about them being on camera.

Had one of his followers been filming them?

Or maybe it was one of Jeremiah’s?

Bruce grits his teeth and resists the urge to slam his fists against a wall.

It was over, for now. And Jerome was gone, again. Now Bruce has to focus on what he had meant to be his backup plan. 

Finding Jonathan Crane and grilling him for answers.

He returns to the Green Zone before noon and manages to get a few hours of sleep. When he wakes up the sun has only just begun to set, and when he heads outside and casts a glance around he can see a pillar of smoke on the horizon in the south.

All the destruction being wreaked out in the Dark Zone could one day level Gotham just as thoroughly as Jeremiah’s bombs would have. Gotham is going to bear the scars of this time for years, maybe even decades.

Both of the Valeskas have left lasting marks on the city, and on Bruce. 

It’s a discomforting thought, no matter how true. 

He makes his way to the hospital before he heads out for the night, knowing that if he runs off without touching base with Selina that she’ll start drifting away all over again. He can’t bring himself to mention the mockery of a kiss, too embarrassed by how thrown off by it he had been, but he tells her everything else. About Jerome, and the carnival, and the almost ridiculously normal vandalism being done by Scarecrow’s followers.

That’s what Selina fixates on, her eyebrows furrowing as Bruce explains the half-familiar symbols that they’d tagged on the buildings. Images he’d seen before, in passing, but never focused on.

Gang identifiers. 

“You can’t survive on the streets if you don’t know whose territory you’re on,” Selina tells him lowly, eyes distant as if deep reflection. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of just how quickly she’d had to grow up out on the streets, and how one small false move on her part could have put an end to her life long before she and Bruce had ever met. “The territorial divides in the Dark Zone are probably still unstable. There’s too much going on out there, too many unknowns, not enough focus or leadership from the new guys in charge. It’s probably a free for all without the mafia keeping everyone else in check.” Selina’s expression smooths out and she sighs, as if reminiscing about the bygone days of normal people being the most powerful players in Gotham’s criminal underworld. “And who knows how many loonies were still on the loose from the Arkham breakout before this place went to hell? There are probably gangs that I wouldn’t even know about out there now.”

“Jerome said before that he’d checked up on his old cronies at Arkham. I don’t imagine it took long for everyone who’d been left there to take their leave and start branching out. Some of the inmates with the most sway; Jerome, Crane, Tetch, probably have followers looking for them.” Bruce bites his lip, wondering if news of Jerome’s survival, rebirth, resurrection—whatever it really was—would make it to the Green Zone once he finally decided to reveal himself, or if it would be a well-kept secret like Jeremiah’s location. “Or, at least, looking for someone like them.”

But there never had been anyone quite like Jerome; he whose cult of followers had sprouted up in the wake of his televised death and had taken the city hostage after his re-awakening.

What would the remaining Maniax do once they heard that their leader—who as far as they could tell had been dead and buried and dug up and discovered to still be a lifeless corpse—had come back to life a second time?

Bruce’s stomach twists uncomfortably.

“So Crane probably a bunch of people already eager to follow his lead,” Selina says, lips pursing together as her eyes narrow. “And if they’re tagging other gang’s symbols over his territory he’s probably got more groups doing the same behind enemy lines. It’s messy, and if anyone out there has some decent critical thinking skills they’ll realize that it’s unlikely that there’s so much obvious trespassing going on,” her tone becomes doubtful, and she casts her gaze towards the window. Bruce follows her gaze, staring at the darkening Gotham sky.

He can still see the pillar of smoke from before. He wonders how long the fire must have been burning. He wonders if an entire city block has been destroyed. 

“But you don’t have much hope for their critical thinking skills?”

“The Mafia dons could be smart. Miss Mooney was smart. Penguin is smart. Whoever’s running around out in the Dark Zone right now? It seems like the smartest ones are going to take all the others on a ride. I’d say it almost sounds like they’re trying to find an excuse to start a turf war.”

“The Dark Zone is already just one giant turf war.”

“Yeah, but the established gangs have their own predetermined rivals from before that they’re more likely to duke it out with. This sounds like he’s trying to get everyone to turn on each other or mess around with any alliances that might have been set. It’s only been a month, no one out there is actually going to trust anyone to have their back. The minute they think something is up those connections are going up in smoke and it’s everyone for themselves.”

“Chaos for chaos’s sake.”

“More than chaos. You think once the gangs start seeing signs that their territory is being invaded that they’re not all going to lash out? It’s going to be a bloodbath.”

There has to be more to it, though. Jerome has been lying in wait for a month, Bruce can’t imagine he would want his existence to be nothing but a ghost story for much longer.

But once he showed his face… The night of the carnival was probably nothing in comparison to what would happen afterwards. 

And if news of his revival got back to whatever hole Jeremiah had hidden himself in…

The idea of the two of them starting some kind of war on each other, not caring for whatever or whoever might be destroyed in the process, is almost enough for Bruce to break out into a cold sweat. The only thing worse than them fighting each other would be if they teamed up to make Gotham their own personal hellscape, but Bruce is almost certain that there’s too much bad blood between them for that to occur.

Although stranger things had happened in Gotham before. 

“I’ll stop it.”

“Bruce,” Selina's voice is firm, almost harsh, in the way that she gets when she’s trying to emotionally distance herself. “You’re not enough. Even—even if I could help you, _we_ wouldn’t be enough. This is too big for you, don’t you get that?”

Bruce thinks about the scorched sides of buildings and the slowly melting ice that had lined the path that he had been sure Jerome had taken. He’d tried to find a quick way around, but the signs of Firefly and Freeze had stretched on for block after block, and he hadn’t been able to bring himself to run directly through the scene of their latest confrontation without knowing with absolute certainty that he wouldn’t end up in between one of their fights.

“I have to try,” his voice sounds weak to his own ears. “I need to try.”

Selina reaches out to lay a hand over his.

“You don’t. Gotham and it’s people aren’t your responsibility.” 

There’s no judgement in her voice, just certainty. But it’s a certainty that Bruce himself doesn’t feel, certainty about something that he cannot accept to be true.

“Gotham is my home, and I—I was too blinded by Jeremiah’s brilliance and ideas to think critically about how much power I was giving him. I put too much faith in him, and that’s why he succeeded, that’s why Gotham has been cut off from the world. Selina, I can’t sit back and do nothing, not when this is—”

“It’s not your fault,” Selina cuts in sharply, fire in her eyes. Her fingers start to firmly dig into the skin of his hand. “He would want you to think that, but it’s not. You trusted him because you’re a good person, and he deceived you because he’s a fucking sociopath who deserves to be locked away in Arkham just as much as his freak brother. Nothing that Jeremiah did was your fault, it’s all on him.”

Bruce wishes he could believe that, but he can’t.

His money built the bombs that cut Gotham off from the rest of the world. He has to take responsibility for that, at the very least. 

“Gotham is my home, Selina, I want to protect it. I’ve already made up my mind.”

She sighs, and her fingers loosen.

“I know. I know. You always make up your mind to do the stupidest things and you haven’t gotten yourself killed yet. But I—I worry about you, kid,” the old nickname drops from her mouth, fonder than it is irate, and she pointedly looks away from him. “You’re… You’re kind of like family to me, you know?”

A warm, happy feeling—brilliantly bright against the near-constant darkness of his thought process as of late—bubbles up inside of him.

“Selina.” He shifts forward to catch her eyes, and he smiles wider than he’s smiled in more than a month, more than two months, more than a long time. “You’re like family to me, too.”

“Well,” her voice is thick, and she’s smiling, and Bruce doesn’t resist the urge to wrap an arm around her. “Good.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure the addition of this chapter makes this the longest fic that I have on AO3 (bringing it just above You were meant to be mine/I am all that you need), and as someone who is generally terrible with longer works--my ability to concentrate on things is not what it used to be--I am just, so proud, lol.
> 
> xoxo

Jerome inhales deeply, and the lingering smell of smoke on the wind brings a wicked smile to his lips. 

Seeing Jeremiah again had been fascinating; he looked like he’d taken a dip in a bleach bath, and he obviously had some sort of plan in the works even if Jerome couldn’t parse together what it was meant to be, and that hadn’t even been the most interesting thing that Jerome had discovered during his brief invasion of Jeremiah’s church. 

Up on the musical festival stage before Jerome had fallen to his maybe-death he’d pressed a knife into Jeremiah’s hand and told him that he was a killer, that they were the same. They were, even back before his final trap had been triggered. He’d suspected at a young age that there was something dark lurking behind Jeremiah’s purposefully bland façade; hidden beneath those upright and demure masks that he favoured which had routinely kept him from being made into a target when the adults in their life were drunk, or angry, or both. It wasn’t until Jeremiah was suddenly gone, and Jerome was more alone than ever and had to face the world by himself with the people who he once loved turned completely against him curtesy of Jeremiah’s insidious falsities, that he’d known for sure. 

There was something wicked inside of Jeremiah, something that he had later come to realize could be taken and twisted into a new type of madness. All Jeremiah needed was a little push, a bad day, a face full of vapour that would drive him absolutely mad and make all the terrible impulses beginning to flourish inside of him insuppressible. 

Jeremiah claimed it wasn’t the trap that Jerome had left that had changed him, but Jerome knows better. Jonathan hadn’t been entirely certain of the outcome of their project but there was no way that whatever he’d mixed up had done nothing but leech the colour from Jeremiah’s skin and eyes. 

Jeremiah has transformed into a monster—just like Jerome—and even if he’s not doing precisely what Jerome had envisioned of he who was meant to become his legacy the disappointment that he’d been feeling for the past month has been somewhat mitigated. 

He could empathize with a preoccupation about Bruce. He could understand, in a way that Jeremiah would absolutely detest, what it was like to get caught up in him.

And wasn’t that absolutely hilarious?

Jeremiah’s been hiding away from Bruce while simultaneously—if his stalker board was any indication—yearning for him like a crazed, lovesick fool. Jerome had already been planning on slipping him the polaroids that he’d taken off of the body of Jeremiah’s follower after wrenching the location of his lair out of him because he’d known—he’d known ever since Jeremiah had shown up earlier than expected while Bruce had been later than expected, ever since he’d seen Bruce worriedly glance over at his brother while he should have only been focused on his own safety—that something was going on. Seeing those pictures of Bruce on the wall surrounding a map that, in all likelihood, marked the places that Bruce had been spotted when he was running around in the dark? It made Jerome even more eager to slip the photos into Jeremiah’s pocket. Jeremiah’s infatuation was something he could easily exploit. 

And exploit he will. 

Bruce hadn’t followed Jerome all the way to Jeremiah’s church, but that mattered little in the grand scheme of things because if Jerome knows anything else about his brother it’s that his drive to be different from Jerome—to be ‘better’ than him—would make it so that he wouldn’t be able to stand that Jerome had gotten close to Bruce while he was in hiding. 

Jeremiah’s going to be too caught up in hasty plans of chasing after Bruce to even think about trying to interrupt Jerome’s special night.

It had felt right, to see Jeremiah face to face before the news that he was more than just a ghost story began to spread around, but he had wondered if he’d need to put a few measures in place to keep his twin from ruining his big reveal. After all; how many people were able to say that they’d cheated death for a second time?

Even if Jerome had had help, the second time.

Thankfully Jeremiah’s obsession with Bruce would take care of keeping him away, at least for now. Poor Bruce had been searching for Jeremiah tirelessly, and he no idea that the tables were about to be turned on him. 

The hunter becoming the hunted. Jerome snorts at the thought. 

But even if Bruce gets caught—although he would wager that it would be far more difficult than anyone would assume of someone who by all rights should have been nothing more than a delicate blue-blood—Jerome isn’t going to let Jeremiah get away with absolutely everything that he pleases.

Where would be the fun in that?

Not to mention—

His fingers flex, as if he’s resisting the urge to clasp his hand around a memory. 

—Jeremiah wasn’t the only one who had a vested interest in Bruce. 

Jerome flicks open his lighter.

He’d mended flesh with this flame, the reminiscence of it—that unexpected encounter with a wounded Bruce who was in the midst of a _hunt_ , finally growing into his teeth and claws and becoming the predator that he was meant to be—softens the edges of his smile.

He’d also lit wicks in order to start a fire to burn down a church with this flame, and the memory of that makes him snicker.

And now he lights a fuse with it, and another, and another. He steps back as they burn down, and he casts his gaze upwards.

“After this,” he says into the stillness of the night, “we’re all going to have so much _fun_ together.”

He laughs raucously, and the sound of it is soon drowned out by shrieking.

Fireworks explode in the sky; fire red and sickly green and brilliant purple. 

A display like this is bound to grab attention, and that’s what Jerome wants.

Light in the Dark Zone—something as celebratory as fireworks, no less, and right after a building had burnt to the ground—is something that the new contenders of Gotham are going to want to investigate. Paranoia has been setting in; they know that their borders aren’t as protected as they would like, they’re starting to think that their allies are becoming enemies, and that their known enemies are gaining the upper hand and are closing in. They’re getting scared and angry.

Even smart people do stupid things when they’re scared and angry. 

And frankly of all the monsters and criminals out in the Dark Zone Jerome doesn’t think that there’s more than a handful that could be considered intelligent in the first place. 

His Legion of Horribles, for one, who were so delightfully twisted and had their own special strengths and smarts to bring to the table.

And his brother, who was as brilliant as he was unhinged. 

Everyone else who held sway over others that Jerome had spied upon during his month of watching and waiting were nothing but a bunch of dismal letdowns. They thought of themselves as leaders even though they had no aspirations beyond taking more territory and starting turf wars, as if the thought of doing _more_ when the city was so thoroughly cut off from the rest of the world had never even entered their pathetic heads. 

Jerome, though, was a natural leader. He had vision, and ambition, and brains.

And cult following of lunatic idiots.

The ones who would come out tonight to find the source of the fireworks—who were either too brazenly confident to care about stepping into a trap if it meant they could lay claim to another city block, or those who didn’t even think it was a trap in the first place—would find themselves overwhelmed.

Because Jerome’s followers. Were. Everywhere. They had, without even truly meaning to, infiltrated almost every gang in an attempt to stay true to the desires that Jerome had instilled in them; that he had nurtured and encouraged with zeal. 

He had opened their eyes, had given them permission to embrace their darkness, and they loved him for it. 

And he knows they’ll be so pleased to see him again. 

His first resurrection had already turned him into more than a man. What would the second do?

He hears someone step onto the roof behind him and he casts a glance over his shoulder.

He’s almost disappointed that it’s not Bruce coming to pull him away from the edge again. That had been—funny, for one, as well as almost sickeningly sweet and thoughtful. Jerome wonders how many more times Bruce is going to attempt to save him.

Jerome wonders if he’ll ever stop.

He chortles to himself at the idea of it; of living on the knife’s-edge of danger that his entire life had been but, for the first time, having a person who was willing to reach out to steady him when he misstepped.

He’d told Bruce before, what feels like an age ago, that Gotham had no heroes.

Maybe he hadn’t been entirely correct.

He pushes those memories to the side, for now, and focusses his attention on his visitor. 

“I hope you haven’t come to try and steal my thunder.”

“Please,” Jonathan scoffs, “as if I need to ride on your coat tails when it comes to having fun. I’m just here to see the terror on people’s faces when they realize that you’re actually alive.” He walks forward until he’s standing beside Jerome and he looks out upon the heavily shadowed city. “And the panic that will follow when they realize that your followers are loyal to you, first and foremost. It will be quite the grim spectacle.”

“I’m counting on it, Scarecrow.” Jerome folds his hands behind his back and rocks on his heels, impatient for the show to begin. “I’m going to leave a mark on this city, one that’ll never fade away.”

Something Jeremiah wouldn’t be able to duplicate.

Something that Bruce would never forget.

Something that would make the sheep in Gotham wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. 

“Even if my heart stops beating,” although he’s not fond of the idea of dying, not when it was clear that he could have more fun than ever entertaining himself in the new, deranged playground that Gotham had become, “I’ll live on forever.”

More than an idea, more than a messiah; what would he become?

Jerome holds his lighter out, nodding his head over to the second set of fireworks that he’d arranged on the other side of the roof.

“I know that flashy isn’t exactly your style,” he drawls with a razor-sharp grin, “but would you like to do the honours of lighting up the next set?”

x-x-x

Once Ecco was certain that their new hideaway was secure she was able to fully comprehend what had transpired.

What Jerome—miraculously alive even though Ecco had been there when his casket was dug up, had seen his grey, lifeless face—had done.

What she had let happen. 

She’d kept the rumours about Jerome’s ghost from Jeremiah and their sanctuary was nothing but a smouldering pile of ash because of it. Guilt gnaws at her; no matter how unfeasible the stories she’d heard were they should have put her on the defensive. What kind of prophet was she if she couldn’t even protect Jeremiah or his place of worship?

Guarding Jeremiah has been her job for years and she’d done so well, how could she have stumbled this badly when things were falling so nicely into place? Jeremiah has followers willing to die for him, and Ecco has found strays that she could force to work for him, and she’s made cautious contact with a man who could perhaps eventually be persuaded to hypnotize people into digging until they dropped from exhaustion. 

Or who could, someday, make a carefully selected set of people believe that they were Thomas and Martha Wayne.

Jeremiah’s plans were finally coming together and yes, the tunnel was still safe and that’s what was most important, but it’s all a matter of principle. 

She had failed him. 

She’ll have to make up it. 

And she knows exactly how she can. 

Jeremiah is fully aware of the depth of his feelings and it’s painfully obvious, at least to her, that he’s anxious to see Bruce again. He’d been mumbling things under his breath, as he was occasionally wont to do nowadays, about what gifts he could bestow upon Bruce—not the tunnel, not yet, the present of being able to re-make a memory and become as he was meant to be needed to be kept a surprise until the time was right—to make his affections, and his intentions, known. It was almost sweet enough for Ecco to crack a smile.

Ecco is going to expedite the process by bringing Bruce directly to him. 

She’d briefly considered it in the beginning when Jeremiah was at his most despondent and unhappy, before the true believers began to flock to him. She’d already known from what little she had seen of them when they worked together on the bombs that Bruce was someone who was guaranteed to put a smile on Jeremiah’s face, and that had only become more apparent with each of Jeremiah’s lovesick glances towards the Green Zone, with every sigh of Bruce’s name, with the way his eyes lit up with interest whenever he received news about Bruce.

She’ll drag him into the dark and lay him at Jeremiah’s feet, if she has to. Maybe then she’ll be able to forgive herself her trespasses. 

She dons her mask and slips into the night, intent on the task that she has laid out for herself. 

Failure is not an option.


End file.
